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IN THE 

PENNYRILE 

OF 

OLD KENTUCKY 



AND 



MEN, THINGS 

AND 

EVENTS 

BY 

SAVOYARD jf<^^ 



^V^ 



Copyright, 1911, by E. W,T*iJewman 



PRESS OF 

THE SUDWARTH COMPANY 

WASHINGTON 

1911 



^^'^^ 






DEDICATION 

It is with a feeling of the liveliest satisfadtion, 
and a sense of the profounde^ gratitude that I 
inscribe this book to E. B. STAHLMAN. 

E. W. NEWMAN. 



\ 



iCI.A303294 



FIRST BOOK 



In The 

Pennyrile 

Of 

Old Kentucky 



A PASTORALE OF THE PENNYRILE. 

I wonder in what Isle of Bliss 

Apollo breathes ambrosial air ; 
In what green valley Artemis 

For young Endymion spreads the snare; 
Where Venus lingers debonair; 

The wind has blown them all away, 
And Pan lies piping in his lair — 

Where are the gods of yesterday? 

The tavern was the chief building of Chicken 
Bristle, situated at the northern extremity of the 
hamlet just above the intersection of the Greensburg 
road. It stood for good cheer, home-like comfort, 
and warm welcome. Constructed of wood it was 
part log and part frame, cool in summer and warm 
in winter. There was an ample front yard, at once 
grove, lawn, and flower garden — here a majestic 
oak, there a spreading elm, and here and there beech, 
sugar maple, and locust, carefully and precisely 
pruned. Scattered hither and thither beds of flowers 
— roses, pinks, violets, dasies, pansies, sweet Wil- 
liams, and tulips — bordered the sinuous gravei 
walks. There were ferns in shady nooks; creeping 
up walls and over arbors was honeysuckle — these 
for the landlord's daughter. There was an enor- 
mous bed of mint on the spring branch, and a bed 
of tansy in the vegetable garden — these for the 
landlord. The green sward was carefully tended, 
close-clipped in season; plentifully top-dressed in 
unseason. 

There was a large vegetable garden that yielded 



8 

abundantly to diligent and intelligent cultivation. 
The orchard supplied fruits — ^apples, peaches, pears, 
cherries, plums. A scuppernong covered the arbor 
over an immense area. There were berries in 
variety and in plenty, and down in the pasture were 
trees that bore prolific crops of nuts. Nearby was 
the dairy with its cool stone springhouse, its burished 
utensils, its arctic crystal water, its rich milk, its firm, 
sweet, nutty, golden butter — these for the landlady. 
The meadows were radiant in springtime, generous 
in harvest time, and pleasant all time. 



The tavern was "The Good Samaritan," and 
ne'er was name more aptly or more happily 
bestowed. The landlord was whimsical, except in 
generosity to his friends and love for his wife and 
daughter ; in these he was perennial ; he was practical 
and drank his coffee "laced" ; he was epicurean and 
garnished jowl and greens with poached eggs and 
accompanied them with corn pone; he was quaint, 
more than half believed in the evil eye, which, he said 
was the mark God put upon Cain ; he read the preach" 
ments of Solomon and delivered learned discourses 
on them ; he was chivalrous and never locked his 
smoke-house; he was convivial and the big-bellied 
bottle was always supplied and always on the side- 
board; he was dogmatic and clinched an argument 
with a more or less profane expletive ; he was liberal 
in religious faith and believed there was happines 
for all beyond the tomb, except certain individuals 
with whom he was involved in tedious and vexatious 
and exasperating litigation. He was farmer, herder, 
trader, distiller, as well as boniface and successful 
in all. He could shoot a rifle, ride a horse, chase a 



fox, carve a joint, brew a punch, talk politics, and 
discourse philosophy. His conscience was easy. 

Full twenty times was David loved 

For once that David was ever dreaded. 

And yet those other lines of Wordsworth need 
no paraphrase when read in light of the plain, direct, 
unpoetic, unaffected, practical character of this 
downright man. 

A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more. 

With a heart free from guile, with an estate free 
from debt, with a spirit free from envy, with a life 
free from stain, he could exclaim : 

"Oh, Abner, I fear God and I fear nothing beside." 

Such was David Philpott, landlord of "The Good 
Samaritan." 



His good wife, Jane, matronly and comely, the 
incarnation of good nature, kind heart, and ready 
sympathy, was fit helpmeet for the excellent man 
with whom she was happily mated. Indeed, the 
Good Samaritan owed its wide fame to her house- 
wifely excellence. She was the soul of that hostelry 
of which a Shenstone might have sung. Her eye, 
ever alert, was in parlor and bedroom, in kitchen and 
dining room, in pantry and dairy. She knew tidi- 
ness, good cheer was ever associated with her, com- 
fort and kindliness walked in her steps. How 
oft did that excellent husband quote the monarch 



10 

who dwelt in cedar palaces, sat on thrones of ivory, 
and wore diadems of jewels — even Solomon. 

"She will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her 
life." 

And the compliment lodged in the grateful heart 
of Aunt Jane, took root there and blossomed and 
fructified and made her a happy woman and gave her 
content that never came to Recamier or Longueville 
or Montagu or Devonshire. 



But the landlord's daughter? She was the idol 
of her father, the joy of her mother, the pride of 
the hamlet. She was the village "beauty, the uni- 
versal favorite — a nymph, a naiad, a grace, divine 
of form and fair of face. With sparkling eye and 
rosy cheek and ruby lip, her smile was a dream, her 
song an inspiration, her love a religion. 

I saw her dance so comelily, 

Carol'd and sing so sweetly, 

And laugh and play so womanly, 

And look so debonairly, 

That, certes, I trow that nevermor 

Was seen so blissful a treasure. 

For every hair upon her head, 

Sooth to say it was not red, 

Nor yellow neither, nor brown it was. 

But oh ! what eyes my lady had, 

Debonair, goode, glad and sad, 

Simple, of good size, not too wide, 

Thereto her look was not aside 

Nor overwart. 

No gathering of the young folk was complete 
without Dorothy. Did the boys and girls make a 
party to go nutting on the knob, it was no party if 
Dorothy was not of it ; did the singing class assemble 
at the old log church, it was discordant song if Doro- 



11 



thy was not there. Was there a dance, it was with- 
out mirth if Dorothy was absent. She led the choir 
and there was rehgion and melody in her voice. Per- 
fect health embellished her beauty and unaffected 
gracefulness lent a thousand charms. 

And dark blue was her e'e. 

She was endowed by nature and trained by edu- 
cation to be the wife of a strong and good man, and 
the mother of sturdy boys and virtuous girls. She 
said "father" and "mother" in dutiful tones, and 
when, at even. 

Her gentle limbs she did undress 
And lay down in her loveliness. 

She said, "Our Father, which art in Heaven," 
reverently, confidingly, truthfully. A christian she 
was, with no more doubt of her faith than of the 
sun ; chaste she was, without knowledge or suspicion 
of evil; simple she was and heedless of the great 
world, its passions, its cruel disappointments, its 
more cruel triumphs. She was reminder of the Re- 
becca whom Isaac mated, and Jacob might have 
blithely served for her thrice seven years. The shrub- 
beries and the fountains of Arnheim might have 
been planted and wrought for one like she. 

Such was Dorothy Philpott, the landlord's 
daughter. 

Richard Ogilvie was the merchant's son and only 
child. He was ever a welcome visitor at the "Good 
Samaritan," where he spent more time between 
dawn and dark than he did at home, and ate more 
meals than at his father's board. The landlord found 



12 

him a good listener, and youth though he was, 
Squire Philpott loved "to throw his discourse," as 
he expressed it, on Dick. Dick was fond of looking 
at, and talking with, Dorothy. Mayhap that is why 
he was so good a listener when the old gentlleman 
held forth. It was the old, old story. Boaz whis- 
pered it to Ruth. It was hoary with age then, and 
venerable with the repetitions of ages. It was ever 
new, too, and will be new in ages yet to be. The 
landlord would expatiate voluminously on Solomon, 
whom he would have chosen as guide for Dick as 
well as for himself. Honest man, he never dreamed 
that Dick was making eyes at Dorothy. He did not 
have imagination enough to live his life over again 
in reverie; besides, he was too busy a man. Aunt 
Jane knew why Dick was hanging around. Trust 
a mother tor that. She knew that Dick danced more 
frequently with Dorothy than with any other girl at 
the quilting at John Cassaday's that spring. She 
knew that Dick went to Blue Spring to church not 
because he was edified by the preaching of Brother 
Brown, but because he rode beside Dorothy, helped 
her to dismount, hitched her horse and whispered 
the old, old story in her ear on the way, going and 
returning. She caught the rascal's glance twoscore 
times thrown toward Dorothy during the service. 
She knew, too, that Dorothy was fancy free, as yet ; 
but that of all the boys round about Dorothy thought 
most of Dick. 



The bloom was on the alder and the tassel on the corn. 

The sun had set, the moon was new, the stars were 
twinkling when Dick Ogilvie made his way to the 



13 

Good Samaritan. The squire had had a more or 
less heated discussion that day with his personal 
friend and political enemy, Rush Higgason, the vil- 
lage doctor, about the "cock" in old Jim Buchanan's 
eye — it was the political campaign of 1856. As re- 
marked, the squire drank his coffee "laced." On this 
particular day he had drunk his whiskey juleped and 
without a prudent calculation as to quantity. It is 
but due him to say, however, that he rarely indulged 
to the degree of excess. He had retired and was 
curled up in bed in the "big room," snoring away 
in the dreamless sleep of a peaceful conscience. Aunt 
Jane welcomed Dick, and soon Dorothy made her 
appearance in becoming lawn frock, with the identi- 
cal rose in her hair that Dick had plucked and given 
her that very afternoon. In those days that was a 
primitive community ; boys sparked the girls in sight 
of the old folks. It is a custom that is honored in 
the observance to this day. Dick had hoped to 
have Dorothy to himself in a corner while Aunt Jane 
nodded over her knitting. 

He reckoned without the squire, however. He 
had not exchanged a dozen sentences with his sweet- 
heart when the old gentleman gave a tremendous 
snort and was wide awake. When awake he was 
bound to talk, and he dearly loved to talk with 
Dick. Mr. Philpott had long been investigating the 
subject of electricity, then a far more mysterious 
force than now. He read everything relating to it 
that he could lay hands on and had experimented 
in a crude way until he had satisfied himself that 
he knew more, about "lightnin' " than anybody else. 
He claimed that he could tell where the electric 
current would "strike." And it was no idle boast. 



14 

Repeatedly he pointed out trees that would be 
stricken and the event vindicated him. Stricken they 
were. He declared that he could build a telegraph 
line over territory, regardless of distance, and that 
no atmospheric disturbance would ever interrupt 
communication over the wires. He loudly pro- 
claimed that he could select ground for buildings 
that "lightnin' " would leave undisturbed during all 
the ages. Lightning rod peddlers he abominated 
and denounced as pretenders and swindlers. There 
is small doubt that he was possessed of a valuable 
secret of nature. Unfortunately he ould not impart 
his knowledge. He could not speak of that subject 
without being eloquent, and his eloquence was far 
from lucid. 



He was now cocked and primed for oratory, and 
oratory on his favorite topic, "lightning." Dick 
knew there would be no more courting for him that 
night, for Dorothy, the roquish dimples chasing over 
her fair cheek, led her dad on, when her beau made 
laconic answers designed to discourage debate. Mrs. 
Philpott was now wide awake and greatly amused 
at Dick's discomfiture and her daughter's mischiev- 
ousness. The old gentleman became more and more 
excited and more and more emphatic, and, by and 
by, he commanded, "Jane, load my pipe." Dorothy 
knew what that meant; so did Dick. The old man 
was going to rise. And that was not all. He had 
a contempt for, as effiminate, and abomination of, 
as troublesome, the article of masculine attire desig- 
nated in the lexicon of the wardrobe of that day 
as "drawers." Like a frightened fawn Dorothy 
sprang for the stair, and her dainty feet made a tat- 



15 

too on the steps as she bounded up them, while 
her musical laugh rang out like the songs of birds, 
clear, mirthful, gay, joyous. Dick hears it yet. 

Meanwhile her father, talking the while, was 
undergoing the process of getting out of bed, her 
mother was loading and lighting the pipe. Dick did 
not know whether to blaspheme or to laugh. The 
old fellow advanced to the middle of the room, 
drawing on his trousers. Hitching them and adjust- 
ing the suspenders, he gave utterance in a voice of 
thunder to this climax of an eloquent apostrophe : 
"Dick, I'm going to prove to you that Ben Franklin 
was a d d old fool." 

This was too much for Dick, whose father had 
taught him that while Franklin was not the greatest 
American, he was the wisest man in the worldly wis- 
dom of his day and generation, and so Dick roared 
with laughter. His old friend took no offense, but 
seized the pipe and settled down for a siege of 
scientific discourse on his favorite topic of lightning. 
Mrs. Philpott slipped quietly to bed whence her lord 
had risen; Dorothy was in the land of dreams, 
while her father clinched argument after argument 
with expletive — not profane, simply emphatic. And 
it was approaching midnight when he dismissed 
Dick, who, as he made his way home, consoled 
himself in the happy recollection that Dorothy had 
promised he might ride with her to Three Springs 
Church the next Sunday. 



That was long years agone. Dick is now an old 
man, and sometimes he thinks he finds something 
consolatory in the words recorded in the gospel of 
St. John : 



16 

"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast 
given me, be with me where I am; that they may 
behold my glory, which thou hast given me." 

Alas for lovers; Pair by pair 

The wind has blown them all away; 

The young and yare, the fond and fair ; 
Where are the snows of yesterday? 

A-COMIN '-AN '-A-GWINE. 



It was where two roads crossed, and yet it was 
a string town. Its name — it was Chicken Bristle — 

Auld Ayr, whom ne'er a town surpasses 
For honest men and bonny lasses. 

It was at the foot of Pilot Knob. On the east 
was Faulkner Field; on the west. Lick Swamp; but 
a stone's toss to the south meandered Blue Spring 
Creek, whose lympid pools, laughing ripples, and 
mossy banks, now coursing green and pleasant 
meadows, now winding through shady and inviting 
groves, made it the loveliest stream in all the world. 
It was in extreme North Barren County, and there 
the sky was the bluest, the sunshine the brightest, 
the grass the greenest, the flowers the prettiest, the 
fruits the sweetest, the nuts the brownest, the water 
the purest, the brooks the clearest — there the birds' 
songs were the most melodious, the groves the most 
romantic, the fields the most peaceful, the pastures 
the most poetic — there the girls were the loveliest, 
the boys the sturdiest — there, exempt from public 
haunt, were 

Tongues in trees, books in running brooks. 
Sermons in stones and HOPE in everything. 



17 

It was not a yeomanry — there was no squirehood. 
It was not a squirehood — there was no yeomanry. 
It was the Kentucky of twoscore and twelve years 
agone, that elder and mayhap better day. Let him 
describe it who can. Who would venture it must be 
poet and patriot as well as historian. 



It was the eve of Christmas, that blessed season 
that moves all hearts, Jew and Gentile, and there was 
a dance at Tom Piper's. Mr. Piper was one of the 
leading citizens of Bristle, the village shoemaker, an 
imaginative character, and a practical man, as may 
be observed anon. The company was select ; pleasure 
was enlarged; the elders were serene in memories 
of Christmas long past ; the youngsters happy in the 
enjoyment of Christmas present. 

There was Tempest Ann Pierce, the belle of the 
ball, with the figure of an Amazon and the beauty 
of an Andalusian. She could leap a fence like a 
deer and spring upon a horse without the aid of stile 
or stirrup. A splendid horsewoman, she was the in- 
spiration of every fox chase. There was Lucy Bul- 
lington, with eyes like Hebe and arms like Aurora, 
gold in her tresses, rose in her cheeks, cherry on her 
lips — a colder beauty because a serener nature. 
Seletta Pointer, a winsome brunette, the prettiest 
girl of all Bristledom and roundabout, was there 
with ravishing black eyes, lustrous, humid, liquid, 
fathomless — once gazed into, forever haunting. And 
there, too, also was Bede Forrest, her blooming cheek 
aflame with robust health and animal spirit, her 
eyes sparkling with elfish mischief and bewitching 
abandon. Hers was the lightest step, hers the shape- 
liest foot, hers the gracefulest form. She was the 



18 

divinest dancer. Her roguish smile might have set 
Greek and Trojan a-fighting. Hers was the voice of 
birds, and it could 

Hark a fish out of the water 
And water out of a stone. 



Some of the bachelors were Dick Pierce, son of 
"Hypocrite" Bill Pierce, and brother of Tempest 
Ann ; Bluford Creedall, a resourceful individual ; 
Dick Ponn, a Green County man, whose suit of 
blue jeans was the admiration of the girls and the 
envy of the boys ; and Bob Gray, the best dancer in 
the crowd, more agile than all the dancing masters in 
France — these were the masters of the revels. Tom 
Pounds, a colored individual, made the music, and 
as he brought out the dulcet strains of "The Mess o' 
Chikens" every foot beat tattoo. Not even a Ful- 
ton nor a Hume, nor any Scot would have supplant- 
ed it with — 

Merrily danced the Quaker's wife, 
And merrily danced the Quaker. 

It was late in the day. The sun was setting in 
glorious splendor just back of Riley Finn's pasture. 
The snow was crisp, the air was chill. Cheerily 
blazed the enormous logs of hickory and blackjack 
on the wide, deep and ample hearth. 

Tempting was the savor that came from the 
kitchen, where Jane Piper, Pone Trusty, and Sarah 
Pierce were busily, and not laconically, preparing a 
feast that would have caused old Epicurus to swal- 
low his tongue in anticipation. The little pot was in 
the big pot, and they made hash in the skillet. Corn 



19 

pone and sweet 'taters were to go with the 'possum ; 
salt rising loaf went with the turkey. There were 
ham and quail and robbin and rabbit. 

In the back room were the lord of the mansion, the 
elder Ponn, and Mr. Jim Cage engaged in a game of 
"seven-up" at two bits "a corner." Mr. Piper had 
taken the precaution to abstract from the deck the 
ace of clubs, the jack of hearts, the ten of diamonds 
and the deuce of spades, a proceeding on his part 
of which his adversaries were blissfully, totally, and 
improyidently ignorant. Experts can say whether 
exclusive knowledge that the pack was short these 
prominent cards gave Mr. Piper, a gentleman of 
tremendous "anagosity," undue advantage. Be that 
as it may, before the night was an hour old Mr. 
Piper was master of all the coin in the room. 

Meanwhile all was merriment and revelry in the 
ballroom. 

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious; 
The piper loud and louder blew; 
The dancers quick and quicker flew. 

It was exhilarating pleasure, and the boys became 
monstrous dry. There was not a "drap" in the 
place, saving Mr. Piper's private bottle, which had 
never whet whistle other than Tom's own. Some- 
thing must be done. It M^as evident the boys could 
not dance all night without strong drink; flesh and 
blood have limitations. There was no money in the 
crowd of youngsters, and resort was had to strategy. 
Mr. Bluford Creedall volunteered his services. It 
was hailed with acclaim. It was known that Mr. 
Creedall "could tell a tale." "If it's in the timber 
Blufe will do it," they confidently asservated. It 



20 

was in the timber; Bluford did it. And thereby 
hange a tale. 



Mr. David Oakes had title to and was possessed 
of a barrel of very fine apple brandy. He was a 
mighty man to take care of — Oakes; some folks 
called him selfish ; certain it was he could be rude 
in refusing credit to those who would buy strong 
waters. This particular brandy was the most de- 
licious tipple ever ordered — none of your applejack 
from the pumice, as they do it in New Jersey; but 
exquisite nectar distilled from the cider of Kerrigan 
apples, rich, ripe, and red, sound and firm as a 
September grown turnip. It was the last and the 
choicest distillation of the venerable Barnett Huff- 
man, the one artist among mortals,, who ould have 
brewed mighty mead for the gods on high Olympus. 
Three fingers of it might have turned bloody Nero 
into a Quaker. It would have discovered another 
world for Alexander to conquer. It would have 
brought another seduction, and the most resistless, 
to Capua — even to the Capua of Hannibal. Had 
Horace quaffed a cup of Huffman's choicest he 
would have turned down his glass to Falernain. 
Lord Bacon said it was the duty of every gentle- 
man to get drunk once a month ; had his lordship got 
mellow on Huffman's ten-year-old he would have 
striken out month and inserted day in the rule of 
conduct he prescribed for the gentle. Oakes had 
the last of Huffman's brand, and it was precious. 
While ball-face whisky sold for two bits the 
gallon, he held his brandy at four times as much a 
pint. 

And now Mr. Creedall undertook to cozen Oakes 
out of a bottle of this rare brandy. He was the 



21 

most circumstantial, the most resourceful, the most 
strategical liar in all that community, and made a 
fair living by his wits. 

Some years before the late Joseph Altsheler, of 
Three Springs, Hart County, just over the way, 
had received from friends in Europe several cases 
of very fine wine. It was in enormous black bot- 
tles, with capacity of three full pints and a generous 
"hog-driver" of a drink over. Mr. Piper had man- 
aged to get possession of two of these — in his eyes 
their special excellence was in the "hog-driver" — 
and there they were on the chimney piece, dolefully 
empty, Christmas though it was. Bluford seized 
them. One he filled with water at the pellucid spring 
at the foot of the hillock and stopped it with a corn 
cob ; the other, still empty, he likewise stopped with 
a cob. Then he put on Dick Ponn's enormous over- 
coat, and, stowing the bottles in the ample skirt 
pockets, one on either side, he set sail for the domi- 
cile of Mr. Oakes, some hundred yards out Buffalo 
street. Arrived at that not altogether hospitable 
tenement, Mr. Creedall announced that he had come 
on business, important business ; that his mission was 
to purchase a bottle of "Old Huffman," and that it 
was for sickness, otherwise he would have continued 
his journey several mides to the Wallace still-house 
and bought ball-face whisky. They soon agreed 
on the price — it would have been in the nature of 
the miraculous had they disagreed. Bluford handed 
Oakes the empty bottle; it was filled at the spigot 
and returned to him, and he was very careful to 
secure the stopper before he hid it away in the am- 
ple pocket. 



22 

Oakes was a mighty hunter, and Creedall began 
to relate to him a cock and bull story of a fine buck 
Trigger-foot Gibson had slain that very morning in 
the Lick Swamp. In a moment the surly Oakes was 
all lively attention and began a rigid cross-examina- 
tion, which brought out some wonderful details of 
the affair. Mr. Creedall was precisely circumstan- 
tial, even for him. Rarely had he been so fruitful of 
the quality of versimilitude as on this occasion. 
When he had worked his man into a hunter's ague 
he turned to go and carelessly said, "Well, I must be 
off; charge the brandy, Oakes, charge it." 

-I'll be if I do," roared Oakes. "See here, 

Blufe, you pay for that brandy before you leave here 
or leave the brandy. That's flat. You know I don't 
sell on credit. I wouldn't credit old man Trigg, 
down at Glasgow, for that brandy, much less you. 
Now just fork over three dollars, or hand back the 
brandy, and do it quick." 

Oakes' eyes became vicious and Bluford saw it 
was no time for fooling. Muttering protestation, 
hinting long-standing friendship, citing numerous 
obligation the house of Creedall had laid on the 
house of Oakes in the past, Bluford slowly and with 
seeming reluctance produced the bottle of water and 
begged to taste it. 

"Not a drop, not a drop," growled Oakes, as he 
removed the bung, seized the bottle, and poured 
its contents into the barrel, muttering curses and 
threats the while. He handed the now empty bottle 
back to his would-be customer and bade him clear 
out for a worthless, shifless, lying scamp and not 
come that way again. Such was Mr. Creedall in 
the green tree. 



23 

In less than an hour Creed and his comrades were 
glorious, over all the ills of life victorious. 

The Clackin yill had made them canty; 
They were na fu, but just had plenty. 

The sun was high in the heavens that Christmas 
morning, before the dancing ceased at Mr. Piper's. 



A CORN-SHUCKING. 

Where is the man of three score in all the South 
who has not fond memories and rapturous reveries 
of the "corn-shucking" of the old South? In sober 
prose Charles Reade wrote a delightful tale of the 
harvest home, and in the book of Ruth we read of 
the gleaming in the fields of Boaz and the winnow- 
ing in his threshing floors. Whitcomb Riley in 
most delicious verse, and redolent of the soil, tells 
of the sentiment and the poetry of rural life. At the 
North, or rather, at the East, they had the "husking 
bee," but it was only at the South, the old South, 
that is now history and tradition, was the "corn- 
shucking," and if it was not an institution of itself 
it was an adjunct of the "institution," as slavery 
was called. 

I shall never forget the fat year 1855. Ceres 
and Pomona came, each with ample lap filled, and 
scattered plenty over the land, until the farmers, 
their wives, their sons and daughters, their man 
servants and their maid servants, rejoiced and made 
merry. Late in the fall when the harvest was done 
and field was brown and forest was naked and frost 
had heralded the approach of harsh and surly winter 
— in the month of November, the glorious season of 



24 

Indian summer, when the feehng of melancholy be- 
comes delicious pleasure, when the old year goes into 
decay that the new year may be born, when frui- 
tion begins to die to make place for the promised 
seed time of the promised springtime, then was th^ 
time for the corn-shucking, the moonlight nights 
of November. But it is tradition now — it died 
with slavery and was buried with it. 



Farmer Cassidy was an energetic and an industri- 
ous man, who ate no idle bread. His sons and 
daughters were dutiful and diligent and his slaves 
served as models for all the negroes in the vicinity 
of Pilot Knob and the territory roundabout in Bar- 
ren, Green and Hart counties. His fields laughed 
with fatness that famous year of the '55. It is the 
''barrens" country beginning on Green river, at the 
mouth of Little Barren and extending through Ken- 
tucky to the west of south till merged into the 
glorious Cumberland valley of middle Tennessee. 
In Kentucky we call it the "Pennyrile" to distinguish 
it from the bluegrass. It is very fertile, and fifty 
years ago it was mostly virgin. When it was first 
settled it was almost as bare of trees as the Western 
prairies — hence its name, the "barrens." 

When Farmer Cassidy gathered his corn that 
season of 1855 it made an enormous pile, a very 
mountain, and now in the splendid Indian summer 
the neighbors were invited to the corn-shucking and 
the succeeding feast that they might partake of his 
hospitality and rejoice with him for the plenty 
that blessed him. They came with their families 
and their slaves and all were made welcome. Early 
in the afternoon the work began at the corn pile. 



25 

White and black, two and three deep, were gathered 
around the mountain of plenty, which was crudely 
divided in halves by the laying of poles from apex to 
base. The hands were also divided — mustered into 
two companies, each captained by a black songster 
and the emulation was which company should first 
"shuck" through the center of the pile. 



Who that ever heard it ever forgot a "corn song" 
as sung by the negroes of the old slave times? It 
will be a memory yet a little while longer, and then 
lost forever, for it is not to be described, and the 
social condition that made it is gone forever. It 
was to sound what the cakewalk is to motion. It 
was the germ of "ragtime" and at once plaintive and 
melodious. There was the leader who improvised 
the words and the chorus answered with an inde- 
scribable peal not at all unpleasant, and pregnant 
with what we might call rhythm. One leader that 
I extravagantly admired when I was a boy of ten 
used to address his words to some mysterious dusky 
belle of the name of Sally. It appears that Miss 
Sally was not kind, and he was telling her and the 
neighbors what he thought about it. There was a 
line like this : 

"ram er-gwine 'away to leab you !" 

Then came the chorus, rich, round, sonorous, 
melodious, and plaintive. As that died away the 
leader addressed some information to Sally of this 
import : 

"I've' got my books and Bibles !" 

And that, too, was followed by the chorus half 
wailing, half rollicking. The sun set and up rose the 
yellow moon to lend additional animation to the work 



26 

and to the song. Faster were the shucked ears thrown 
into the crib and louder was the melody. As the husk- 
ing neared the finish a song of frenzy — some of it 
doubtless due to the jug of new corn whisky that 
had occasionally passed from hand to hand during 
the evening — seized the whole concourse and they 
worked like mad. As the last ear was shucked a 
shout went up that might have been heard for miles. 



Meanwhile all the girls of the neighborhood were 
in the "big room" at the dwelling quilting and prat- 
tling and laughing and blushing. It was a race 
between them and their sweethearts as to which 
should be finished first — the corn pile or the quilt. 
There mothers were with Mrs. Cassidy in the "fam- 
ily room" deeply absorbed in the discussion of neigh- 
borhood matters, the baking of bread and cake, the 
roasting of fowls, the preparation of catsups, pickles 
and things. The kitchen was the busiest place on 
the whole plantation and ruled with iron rods by 
the best cooks in the world — the old black m.ammies 
of the old slave times. 

When the corn was in the crib, when the quilt 
was on the bed, when the feast was spread in the 
big dining room, the old folks ate first, and as they 
sat down to the table the tuning of a fiddle was heard 
in the "big room," the boys got their sweethearts 
for partners and the dance began. The old folks 
smoked and gossiped till midnight and then went 
home. The young folks danced and feasted till 
daylight, and even after breakfast danced another 
set before they dispersed. 

But the rollicking fun was down at the cabin — 
here was the energy as well as the potery of motion, 



27 

here was the laughter that came from the happiest 
hearts in all ages. 

"Nae Cotillon brent new frae France, 

But hornpipes, jigs, strathpeys and reels." 

That was the thing. We shall ne'er look on its 
like again. 



OUR VILLAGE I. 

More than 100 years ago Joseph Philpott, then a 
man of thirty, left Frederick, Md., journeyed west- 
ward and located in the northern part of Barren 
County, Ky., near the Green County line. He built 
a village there and called it Frederick, but the name 
did not stick, for some reason or other, and about the 
time the Marquis de Lafayette visited this country 
last the village was called for him, and it goes by 
that name to this day; but there is a Lafayette m 
Christian County, and thus this Barren County 
postoffice was not Lafayette, but center, because the 
village is equi-distant from four county seats — Glas- 
gow, Edmonton, Greensburg and Munfordville. 

It is a "string" town, and three score years ago, 
at the extreme north end, the single street, which 
was a part of the Glasgow and Greensburg road, 
made an acute angle, changing from north and south 
to east and west. Just north of the angle and 
exactly facing the street was a very large building 
of numerous rooms and constructed of logs. That 
was the traven; At the south end of the village, 
300 yards from the traven and exactly facing it, was 
the residence of Mr. Philpott, and in front of his 
house was another angle in the Glasgow and Greens- 
burg road where it deflected to the east. On either 



28 

side of the street were stores and dwellings, all 
built by Mr. Philpott. There was a church — called 
a meeting-house — near Mr. Philpott's residence. It 
was the largest single room log house I ever saw. 
Mr. Philpott gave it to the public, and the Baptists, 
Methodists and Presbyterians used it for many years 
as a place of worship, and Mohammedan or 
Hindoo might have used it for the same purpose 
had he come that way and been disposed to prose- 
lyte. There was also a double log house near 
by, used as a schoolhouse and a town hall. This, 
too, was the gift of this old man to the public. 
Measured by the means at his command, Joseph 
Philpott was as public-spirited a man as Peter 
Cooper, and as much of a public benefactor. He died 
at nearly four-score and ten in 1859. 



That village was ninety miles from Louisville 
and ten miles east of the Louisville and Nashville 
turnpike. The land round about was fertile and at 
least two-thirds of it virgin soil. Except some 
swamps that were well timbered and of very rich 
soil, it was a "barrens" country — plenty of "nigger- 
head" rocks, scrub hickory, post oak, walnut and 
hazelnut. It was fine for corn, tobacco, wheat, 
oats and rye. It was excellent for bluegrass, too. 
Tobacco was the money crop, but he was a farmer 
among a hundred who knew how to grow it, how 
to cure it and how to handle it. As a rule, the 
tobacco barns were miserable makeshifts, construct- 
ed of logs, without "chinking and daubing," and 
with leaking roofs and broken doors. Indeed, the 
rule was no door at all. Tens of thousands of 
dollars were lost to that community by reason of 



29 

the shiftless methods of the tobacco raisers, and 
other tens of thousands were lost to it by an ig- 
norance of, or defiance of, the advantage of crop 
rotation. 

In those days, I speak of the fifties, I do not 
suppose there were one dozen fields seeded to clover 
within a radius of a dozen miles of the village of 
Lafayette. The livestock of all descriptions- 
horses, mules, cattle, sheep and hogs— were hope- 
lessly "scrub," as a general thing, though there 
were many exceptions in the matter of saddle 
horses. Barren, Hart. Green and Adair counties 
were noted for saddle animals, and I have an im- 
pression that the famous Elastic, the greatest sire 
of saddle horses, was an Adair county stallion. But 
the farm horses, as a rule, were a poor lot. There 
was a little, just a little, dealing in cattle. Now and 
then a trader would buy a drove of cattle and drive 
them to the "upper counties," as the bluegrass was 
called. It was a poor business, and very "little was 
made of it. Mules and horses were bought for the 
Southern market. There were numerous small dis- 
tilleries and tobacco manufactories in that vicinity, 
and their products were sent South, and considera- 
ble profit resulted. 

Saturday afternoons were great occasions for 
the village and the farmers of that neighborhood. 
The general store merchants did a thriving business 
Saturdays. The saddler was a most excellent citi- 
zen— P. J. Snider. He was also a justice of the 
peace. No doubt there are saddles in that commun- 
ity to this day made by the hand of "Jack" Snider, 



30 

who was garnered in the harvest of the just a 
third of a century ago. 

There were two blacksmiths' shops in the village, 
)nd they were always busy in crop time "laying" 
and "sharpening" plows. The "niggerhead" rock 
made them many a job. All that is changed now. 
The movable plow point has done away with it. In 
the fifties the wooden moldboard was yet the fash- 
ionable plow in North Barren county, and the mod- 
ern implement had a hard fight to drive it out of 
the field. 

There were few meadows; but it was remarked 
that every farmer who had a meadow was a pros- 
perous man. Hay ricks on farm were a mark of 
solvency, and I cannot recall a single farmer, who 
had a good meadow and who encouraged the growth 
of grass on his lands for pasture, who could not 
get all the credit at the store he would ask for. The 
men who were "hard run" for money and without 
credit were they who followed tobacco with corn 
and corn with tobacco, and it was so, regardless of 
the number of slaves a man had. 



In those days the credit system prevailed. Little 
or nothing was exempt from execution, and the 
"homestead" act was not the law of Kentucky till 
1866. A Barern county man — James W. Gorin, 
then a State Senator — was the author of that legis- 
lation. Merchants went to Louisville twice a year, 
bought goods on credit and sold them on credit. 
Most of them broke, and it is a tradition in business 
that dry goods stores have furnished to statistics a 
greater percentage of bankrupts than any other 
branch of trade. 



31 

The farmer who had credit at the store generally 
paid his account when he marketed his tobacco. 
Some few sold hogs, fewer yet sold cattle. Manj 
paid their store accounts with money realized from 
the sale of mules ; but the great credit producer and 
account-payer was tobacco. 

A day will come when that country — the "bar- 
rens" of the Green river region — will be a vast dairy 
farm and poultry yard. When Kentucky shall be 
finished, in a material sense, as England is, Hart, 
Green, Barren and Metcalfe counties, will furnish 
cheese, butter, milk, beef, mutton, eggs and poultry 
to Louisville and Cincinnati. 



OUR VILLAGE II. 

Under the feudal system of the old world there 
were what we may call farm villages. It afforded 
some sort of protection in troublous times, and there 
was the great advantage of close and intimate as- 
sociation. There was the village common, the bowl- 
ing green, where the elders gossiped and the young- 
sters sported. The land tilled by some of the 
villagers was miles away. It was secure from the 
incursions of domestic animals, for horses, cattle, 
sheep and hogs were member of their owners' house- 
hold, and sheltered under his roof, and those of 
them that were not, were securely stabled or styed, 
near to the cottage of their owner. Some years 
ago it was attempted to establish the farm village in 
Georgia, but with what success I have never been 
able to learn. It looks like the rational thing to do. 
It would save hundreds of millions in fencing and 



32 

bring men, women and children together to their 
mutual advantage from every standpoint. 

In our country we have allodial title to lands. The 
title in fee gives absolute ownership, and though 
Boonesboro, Harrodsburg and other places in the 
early settlement of Kentucky might have been called 
"farm villages," when the danger from the red 
men passed, your Kentuckian built his farm house 
on his own soil, and thus Kentucky farm houses 
were hopelessly isolated and farm life in winter 
distressingly monotonous. In severe weather a little 
breakfast was fried, a little dinner was boiled and 
a little supper was stewed. The stock was fed and 
the wood was cut, and thus the day's work was over. 
There were few books and very little disposition to 
read them had they been plentiful. Magazines 
were almost unknown, and it was not every farmer 
who took a newspaper. It was a life of toil, and not 
very intelligent toil. Valuable forests had an im- 
placable and relentless enemy in every farmer. The 
land was skimmed and rarely nursed. In the north- 
ern part of Barren county in those days there were 
practically but two crops — corn and tobacco. As 
a result there were old fields where fine forests ought 
to have been, and deep gulleys on hillsides that 
should have been covered with thick sod. 



But the people had their amusements. In the 
springtime, as the fuller crimson came upon the 
robin's breast and a livelier iris changed on the 
burnished dove, then was the militia muster when 
the whole community assembled at the voting place, 
and those of military age were required to drill. It 
was on this occasion that the owners of stallions 



33 

brought their horses into a ring to show their good 
qualities to farmers who had mares to breed. Each 
stalHon was in splendid condition and his coat Hke 
satin. Crowds gathered about them and criticised 
adversely or praised them extravagantly. 

Then there was the shooting match. It was for 
a beef, and generally came off on Saturday. Th^ 
best marksmen competed for the prizes. As I now 
remember, the first choice was the hide and tallow, 
the next four prizes were the four quarters of the 
slaughtered animal, and the last prize was the lead 
that had been expended in the contest, and was im- 
bedded in the tree against which was set the target. 
There was much whiskey consumed on these occa- 
sions; but it was good licker, for it was too cheap 
to tempt the adulterer. 

Every man and boy was a hunter. Old Capt. 
Hiser, a prosperous farmer, had slain over 3,000 
deer. He came to Barren county in 1802. He told 
me that when he first got to that part of the world 
he had nothing in the way of property but a horse 
and cart, a gun, a bed and a skillet. The first year 
he and his good wife simply "lived on" game — 
venison for meat and turkey for bread. Powder 
and lead were too precious to waste. When he 
wanted squirrels he went to Pilot Knob, next to 
Green and Hart counties, and knocked them out the 
trees with rocks. 'Possums were to be had at all 
times in season, and hundreds of rabbits were caught 
in "gums." Turkey and quail were entrapped in 
"coops." Capt. Hiser was a splendid citizen. He 
soon had an excellent farm. His word was as good 
as his bond. His slaves took pride in their master.- 
His friends were legion. He was as simple in his 



34 

honesty as a child and as generous in his charity 
as a prince. I have frequently heard him say that 
the happiest years of his life were when he and his 
wife lived in a cabin and depended as much on his 
skill as a hunter for food as they did on his industry 
as a farmer. 



In those days the circus came that way semi-an- 
nually. The village of Lafayette was just half way 
between Glasgow, the county seat of Barren county, 
and Greensburg, the county seat of Green county. 
Circus day every negro was a free man — he and his 
wife and children — and all of them ecstatically 
happy if there was only the price of admission in 
their purses. For this they had worked and saved 
since the day the "show-papers" were first "put up." 
There was always an immense concourse of peo- 
ple in the villages, nearly all farmers, their wives, 
sons, daughters and slaves. The elephant was the 
great attraction in the street parade and the clown 
was the favorite under the canvas. For weeks 
after that show was discussed in farmhouses and in 
cabin. The circus was a benefactor. It gave cheer 
to thousands and thousands. It excited and fed the 
imagination and gave no little thirst for knowledge 
of the great world of which that primative com- 
munity had the vasfuest idea. 

Though Louisville, the metropolis of the State, 
was only ninety miles to the north, you could count 
on your fingers the inhabitants of that neighborhood 
who had been there. Two or three of that people 
had gone on a flatboat to New Orleans. They were 



35 

adventurers, indeed. Three had been soldiers of the 
Mexican war. These were heroes, indeed. 

Now all is changed in that part of the world. It 
is a new county and a new people. Old things have 
passed away. 



OUR VILLAGE III. 

Time out of mind people of all conditions and both 
sexes have regretted "the good old days" of their 
childhood and adolescence. 

Just at that age twix boy and youth, 
When thought is speech and speech is truth. 

It is a perfectly natural working of our minds. 
The mature man and woman see things as disclosed 
to their reason, whilst the bo}^ or girl looks on things 
revealed to the imagination. The springtime is the 
season of promise; the summer is the season of 
action ; the autumn is the season of harvest, and 
the winter is the season of decay and regret. There 
is no man of three-score who does not dream that 
he could better his life if opportunity were offered 
to live it over again, and it is doubtful if one in a 
hundred would escape a life of even more blunders 
if he were allowed a trial of a second existence in 
the material world that we see and feel, where we 
plan and toil, and come at last to say with the 
monarch whose throne was of ivory, whose crown 
was of rubies, and who dwelt in cedar palaces, who 
was the wisest of mankind and whose every appetite 
was humored and- supplied — we come to say with 
him "vanity of vanities — all is vanity." 



36 

Those who have read Edmund Clarence Stedman's 
deHcious lines, "On the Doorstep," understand what 
I have said in the above paragraph. In that delight- 
full little narrative the mature man returns to his 
boyhood. He tells us of the conference meeting that 
he and his sweetheart attended. We can see the im- 
patience with which he awaited the conclusion of 
the devotions. We "see the girls come tripping past 
like snowbirds willing to be mated." We feel the 
timidity with which he advances to escort the girl 
of his choice. We see the blush with which she takes 
his arm, and feel the thrill of ecstacy that shocked 
him from crown to heel : 

"The snow was crips beneath our feet, 

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming. 
By hood and tippet sheltered sweet, 

Her face with youth and health was beaming. 

"The little hand outsiide her mufif — 

O sculptor, if you could but mold it! 
So lightly touched my jacket-cufif. 
To keep it warm I had to hold it. 

"To have her with me there alone — 

'Twas love and fear and triumph blended. 
At last we reached the foot-worn stone. 
Where the delicious journey ended." 

They paused on the threshold and the little witch 
shook her ringlets from her hood, and understood 
the daring wish with which he trembled. A cloud 
overhead came kindly, the moon was slyly, slowly 
peeping through it, and it gave him courage for this : 

"My lips till then had only known 
The kiss of mother and of sister. 
But some how, full upon her own 
Sweet, rosy, darling mouth — I kissed her! 



37 

"Perhaps 'twas boyish love, yet, still, 

O listless woman, weary lover! 
To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill 
I'd give — But who can live life over?" 

It comes to every one to wish he could "Hve hfe 
over." The boyhood dream of future success and 
immortal fame and the boyhood love of some rosy 
girl in hood and tippet is in the memory of every 
man. But it is only a memory, and Dean Swift 
remarks that the memory is the grave of things. 

When I was a boy I spent many a happy day in 
the old log schoolhouse at Lafayette in North Bar- 
ren county, and here is the malice and cruelty of 
this life — it was. not till years after, that I came to 
know they were happy days. When I heard the el- 
ders of the village discourse of the happy days of 
childhood and schoolboyhood, I did not believe a 
word of it and laid it all to cant. I now know what 
a fool I was. The school was a very different in- 
stitution from the schools of nowadays. The teacher 
was strong on spelling and on ciphering. The pupil 
was required to wade through the old blue back 
speller at least twice before he was permitted to 
read. Nowadays they put children to reading before 
they know their letters. The old-fashioned spelling 
bee is a thing of the past, when on Friday afternoon 
the school was divided into two classes and com- 
peted for the prize that was awarded for excellence 
in spelling. We have none of that now, and that is 
why we have so few good spellers. 



I remember at the school taught by Alexander 
Ford, who is now in the realm the good God prepar- 
ed for the just — I remember at that school that a boy 
did not begin to cipher until he had got through 



38 

the third reader, and had considerably progressed in 
penmanship. And even then he was denied a slate 
and pencil until he had collared the multiplication 
table and mastered it. He was recjuired to know it 
thoroughly, constantly and instantaneously. He 
knew not the moment Mr. Ford would roar out: 
"John, what's seven times six, or nine times nine?" 
If he did not give the correct reply before the sound 
of the old man's voice had died away, John was 
ordered to surrender his slate and learn the multipli- 
cation table. 

The boy who could cipher through the rule called 
"Practice" in old Pike's arithmetic, was envied by 
all who had not advanced so far. If he could wade 
through vulgar fractions he was a hero. If he had 
got to "Tare and Tret" he was a Jason of a man, an 
adventurer so daring as to be the despair of his less 
successful rivals, and if he had "worked" two or 
three "sums" in "Tare and Tret" he was a demi- 
god, a wizard of "figgers" and the darling of the 
school. 

At "playtime" there was bat and ball, and the 
game was called "town-cat" — it was the genesis of 
baseball, not so scientific, but just as enjoyable and 
less destructive to life and limb. Sometimes the boys 
played marbles, and sometimes the boys spent "play- 
time" searching for a scurrilous miscreant, who had 
audibly uttered the word "school-butter" in that 
vicinity, or had been reported as uttering it. It 
was a mortal affront and only a ducking could as- 
suage the disgrace of it. Mr. Ford never expelled 
a pupil. He ordered things different — he never 
spared the rod, and it was understood that every big 
boy in school would get a licking, if, within a cer- 



39 



tain time, the man who had said "school-butter" had 
not been thoroughly ducked in Philpott's pond. 

The poet Stedman asked, "But who can live life 
over?" I have the last few minutes. 



OUR VILLAGE IV. 

In the Kentucky of half a century ago the August 
election was a great event. It was the grand annual 
inquest the people made of State or County affairs, 
and took stock of their governmental holdings. It 
was when the year was in its prime, the season of 
fruition. The flowers of the springtime had en- 
couraged the husbandman with promise, and this was 
the month the pledge must be redeemed. Grain 
fields had yielded their harvest, and meadows were 
dotted with stacks. Corn was in the glorious rich 
roasting ear. Tobacco fields were clean and tobacco 
plants were topped. It was that splendid season 
when summer is preparing for the reception of her 
bridegroom autumn. 

The August election was a day for boys and 
slaves as well as for men, and the most abject negro 
was free for that four and twenty hours, and he, 
his wife and children were early comers to the place 
where the polls were opened. The village of La- 
fayette was a "Stringtown," and in my boyhood 
it was the polling place of the extreme northern 
community of Barren county. It was at the foot of 
Pilot Knob, and a little way to the south were the 
waters that started to the sea by way of Blue Spring 
Creek. In the delightful and romantic valley of that 
placid stream, now lazy in deep pools, now lively 



40 

in gravelly riffles, lived some prosperous farmers, 
owners of numerous slaves, and many of those farm- 
ers voted at Lafayette. 

Slavei-y existed in its mildest form in Kentucky, 
and showed its brightest side. It was only a mean 
man, unspeakable, who was mean to his negroes, and 
nothing could shield him from a public contempt 
that was as cruel as the Athenian ostracism. Not 
only material interests, but social peace required 
that the slave should be well treated, and it was 
notorious that the slave in a fashion reflected his 
master. Thus the slave of a proud man was proud 
and the slave of a thrifty man was thrifty. The 
slave of a vicious man was vicious, and the slave of 
a trifling man was trifling. The slave always and 
everywhere was the label his master put upon him — 
he was what his master made him. 



Every slave, who would have it, had his "patch" 
for watermelons or tobacco, or both, as he pleased, 
and he was given time to cultivate it. Those of 
them who had melons, rich, ripe and red, by the 
day of election, reaped a harvest. On that day the 
master furnished the negroes with wagon and team, 
or cart and oxen. The very thrifty ones set tables 
in the street under the shade of the trees, and served 
roast mutton, chicken, bread, cakes, coffee and cider, 
and many of them reaped fat abundance of coin of 
the republic. They were always protected in this 
little business by the leading whites, and woe to the 
white vagabond who failed or refused to pay his 
score. 

While the solid men of the community were at 
the polls watching the progress of the voting, or 



41 

went hither and thither rallying their partisans for 
the civil fray, boys were engaged in games, and 
sometimes they and their elders engaged in fights; 
but it was with nature's weapons. There was no 
hip-pocket, and a pistol was a disgrace and a 
cowardice. About noon those of the slaves who 
could play the fiddle brought out that instrument, 
and the music, the most inspiriting you ever heard, 
saluted the ear, and the strains were from the big 
spring at the north to the big meeting-house at the 
south of the village, and now it was that the young 
negro men led out the buxom dusky belles, and such 
dancing on the dusty bosom of mother earth was 
nowhere else ever seen or heard. It was vigorous 
in the extreme, it was agile in the most astonishing 
degree, and there was a something about it that we 
may call a robust gracefulness — the very rhythm of 
motion — that put every eye a-shining, every foot 
a-patting, every ear a- jingling. The fun grew fast 
and furious, the laughter loud, volcanic from con- 
tented heart, and to be capable of it as we were then, 
where is the man who would not "fetch water from 
hell" to insure it? White men crowded around and 
the dancers who did not extort applause from the 
white folks were not only slighted, but disconsolate. 
And so the mirth continued until the evening sun 
kissed the treetops of the Lick Swamp in the west 
and admonished the negroes that it was time to gear 
up and go home. 



Meanwhile there was excitement at the polls, for 
the Lafayette precinct was sometimes Whig and 
sometimes Democratic, and so was the Barren county 
of that day. It was a convivial age, and no great 



42 

disgrace came to the man who was publicly intoxi- 
cated. Candidates "electioneered" and rode over the 
country with saddlebags laden with sundry bottles of 
whisky "treating" their supporters and opponents 
alike. There was no excise tax, and a barrel of 
whisky could be bought for $8 — excellent whisky, 
too, if such a term may be applied to the stuff that 
enrages scores where it cheers one. But in those 
days treating was expected, and it was required. A 
candidate who would employ the methods of "elec- 
tioneering" nowadays that the best men did in those 
days — the unlimited and indiscriminate use of whis- 
ky, not as a bribe, but as an evidence of good fel- 
lowship — would not carry a single precinct of Bar- 
ren county, no matter what ticket he represented. 

As the sun went down the polls were closed. The 
viva voce system prevailed, and when the last vote 
was recorded, the clerk of the election footed the vote 
cast for each candidate, and the sheriff announced 
the result. The victors were jubilant and the van- 
quished correspondingly depressed. A stir-up cup 
was drunk, and by dark the village was left to its 
own denizens. Another civilization has supplanted 
that of the fifties. Evolution has done, and is doing, 
its ceaseless works of destruction and construction. 
The August election is gone. Slavery is gone. The 
viva voce vote is gone. Conviviality is less prevalent. 
Old things have passed away. Most things have 
become new. 

But to the man of three-score the Kentucky Au- 
gust election is at once a pleasure of the memory 
and a regret of the heart. 



43 
ROBERT S. MUNFORD. 

When Robert S. Munford died Hart county lost 
a man who will be loved and quoted by men yet 
unborn. He was a unique character, a combination 
of charming simplicity, impractical wisdom and 
lovable folly. There was a streak of Jonathan Old- 
buck in him, and a rather pronounced streak. There 
was a suggestion of Wilkins Micawber about him, 
too, for hope — most blessed of all endowments God 
has given to men — was a leading attribute of his 
character. He believed in men and women. He 
doted on children. He loved the soil, the waters, 
the trees, the stones, the flowers and the grass. He 
was a friend of all domestic animals. He was a 
child of and a student of nature. He was that happy 
man — an observer of common things. 

He was garrulous, and one of the few imaginative 
men who loved the companionship of man more 
than the solitude of nature, though he loved both 
passionately. He was an authority, more or less 
conclusive, on many things — on hunting, on fishing, 
on farming, on natural history, on geology and 
many other matters. He was a famous antiquary 
and collector of Indian relics and relics of another 
race his imagination saw vividly, and a race that was 
ancient when Father Abraham was promised for 
his seed dominion over all the earth. Few men got 
as much satisfaction out of life as "Bob" Mun- 
ford. 



I shall never forget my first meeting with him. 
It was near two score years agone. I had some busi- 
ness at Munfordville and made the journey from 



44 

Edmonton there on horseback — above thirty miles. 
"Putting up" at the taven I found Col. Munford a 
guest also. It was not until the following morning, 
after my business was transacted, that I fell in with 
him and came to know him^ though I knew his 
brother, William E. Munford, so long an honored 
citizen and public official of Barren county. Another 
brother was a leading journalist of Kansas City, Mo. 
The next morning was bitter cold; it was one of 
those sudden changes that come without warning. 
Snow was deep on the ground and the thermometer 
indicated zero or a little worse. The landlord, 
John W. Allen, as good a man as I ever knew, asked 
me if I would return home that day. In reply I 
informed him that unless there was a change in the 
weather he might expect me for a guest the remain- 
der of my natural life. He then introduced me to 
Col. Munford, and he could not have done me a 
greater favor. 

We fell a-talking, or, rather, he fell a-talking, and 
I fell a-listening. Nobody could be more entertain- 
ing, more instructive than he. He talked till noon, 
when we, and a schoolmaster named Meade, went 
into the dining room and sat down before as good 
old Kentucky cookery as you ever flung your tongue 
over, presided over by one of the landlord's daugh- 
ters, 

"With eyes like Hebe and arms like Aurora." 

The charm of her conversation and the gracious- 
ness of her manner so fascinated us all that even 
Munford refused to monopolize the occasion. 



After dinner we monopolized the public room, and 



45 

he talked until the Courier-Journal came. After we 
had finished our respective copies he began again 
and talked till supper. The theme of his discourse 
was bees. It may be that some man since the time 
when Samson found that flock of them in the car- 
cass of that lion he split open, knew as much about 
bees as Bob Munford, but the man never lived who 
could tell as much about bees as he could. Some 
of his narratives bordered on the fabulous, but for 
about ten hours — we kept it up till after 10 o'clock 
at night — I was never more entertained in my life. 
As we parted for the night he remarked that he 
Ifad just dipped a little into the subject. 

Next day the weather was still worse, and as 
soon as breakfast was over we got together and had 
the identical experience that day we had gone 
through the day before, except that the theme of 
his discourse was fish and fishing. I would give 
much if I could repeat his narrative of a catch of 
"goggle eyes" he made in some spring near Green 
river, when the weather was just about what it 
was that day we sat before the generous and inviting 
log fire in Uncle John Allen's tavern "twice twenty' 
years ago." He had fished in a dozen States and 
a hundred streams. He had caught more fish in 
quantity, and more fish, in variety than any other 
man in the country or in the world. 



The third day the blizzard was yet raging, and 
Uncle Bob gave me a lesson in hunting. A mighty 
hunter was he, and he could have taught Nimrod a 
trick or so in that line. When a boy he read every- 
thing he could find about the Indians, and he be- 
lieved every Indian was just such a being as 



46 

Cooper's Uncas. There were no bad Indians, in his 
esteem. When a young man he Hved for months 
with a tribe of friendly Indians, and gained a com- 
plete knowledge of their polity, their habits, their 
virtues. He was their friend always. They taught 
him many secrets of woodcraft, especially the use 
of the hunting knife and the ensnarement of game. 
He said he had slain above a thousand deer and 
many score bear. It has been a long while ago, and 
I have only a general idea of his conversation, but 
his narrative is yet fixed in my recollections as about 
as fine a discourse on hunting as was ever delivered. 

The third day was not so cold, but there was fall- 
ing a vicious, frigid, surly, steady, tenacious rain, so 
I remained another day. Now his theme was farm- 
ing. Horace Greeley would have delighted in him. 
He had developed a winter turnip that ought to have 
made him immortal. It was a wonder, and the 
"greens" from half a dozen of them, clipped every 
day from February to May, were the complement of 
an exquisitely cured jowl for each day of that 
"greens" season. He was an authority on clover and 
other legume crops grown for fertilization. I was 
inexperienced, but I could not but suspect that when 
he " turned under " nitre to the value of a dollar 
as a fertilizer it had cost about two dollars. That is 
what broke him. As a theorist he never saw his 
fellow; as a practical farmer, why, Hart county is 
full of men who could teach him the A B C of that 
noblest of all vocations. But it is like the memory of 
a sweet dream of youthtime, to recall that lecture 
on farming in Allen's hotel that day by that kindly 
old red-headed gentleman, who was another Ben 
Franklin, if he had only known anything thoroughly 



47 

or cared anything for the altogether practical in life. 
Franklin was a sordid man, but Franklin was a 
universal benefactor. Munford strove to benefit his 
kind; but Munford was a dreamer. He amused 
men. 



I saw him many times after that. I remember it 
was the year of the famous Beecher trial. He was 
for the prosecution and Judge Gardner, of the 
County Court, was for Beecher. One day the 
Courier-Journal came out with an editorial headed : 
"Have Done With It," by Mar's Henry. It pleased 
Uncle Bob immensely. He damned himself if it 
was not a classic and read it to twenty different 
people that day. I had greatly enjoyed it before 
I met Uncle Bob; but I pretended ignorance, and 
he carried me way down the hill to hear him read 
it. He and Gardner had it hammer and tongs that 
evening. 

He was an enthusiast, and but for that guild 
men and women would yet be dwelling in tents and 
living as they did when Abraham and Lot were the 
two foremost men of the whole world. He was a 
bachelor, but the man never lived who put a more 
exalted estimate on the character of woman than 
he. He was something of a beau all his life. Not 
a coxcomb — no man farther from that — but he 
always loved to be among women, to talk to, and 
with, them, and all the elder ones honored him, and 
all the younger ones, however far they were from 
being "in love" with him, loved him. 



The last time I saw him he had just come into pos- 
session of a marvelous Indian pipe. He was an 



48 

inveterate collector of such things and when the war 
broke out he could have sold his cabinet for a fabul- 
ous sum. He was plundered during the war and 
most of his collection was stolen. It was County 
Court day and he was exhibiting his wondrous pipe. 
Since then I have read the works of Gaborieau and 
the author of "Sherlock Holmes." Neither ever 
shared half the ingenuity in reasoning from effect 
back to cause that Bob Munford did that day in 
showing how it was that the pipe was the property 
of a chief. And he proved it, too. And to the 
satisfaction of all. 

The late Maj. Botts was a great wag; so is Dave 
Towles. One Circuit Court at Munfordville the 
late E. I. Bullock, of Paducah, had an important 
case in the Hart Circuit Court. He was on hand 
deep in the study of the record. Botts and Towles 
told Munford that Judge Bullock knew more about 
bees than any man in the world, and that he had 
propagated a "sour wood" bee that would uptrip 
the very old devil himself. That was enough for 
Munford. He determined to discuss bees with Bul- 
lock. He tried it half a dozen times and each time 
he was snubbed. Botts and Towles encouraged him 
with the explanation : "Ke knows you will discover 
his secret if he talks with you; keep prodding him." 
Munford did keep prodding him until Bullock turned 
on him and delivered an oration damning all bees 
from those Virgil romanced about down, and wound 
up with the assertion : "I don't even love honey." 
Munfordville is laughing over that story yet. 



Bob Munford lived in this world nearly four 
score years and ten. During all that time he never 



49 

did wilful harm to any one. That can be said of 
few of the world's great men. He will rest easy in 
his honored grave. The grass will lie light above 
him. 



LONG AND SHORT NOVELS. 



Touching the question of long and short novels — 
which is to be preferred — it may be generally re- 
marked that there never was a good novel that was 
too long, and there never was a bad one that was 
too short. Poe's short novels are read with much 
pleasure; but "Les Miserables," gigantic in its five 
parts, is worth ten times more than all the novels 
Poe ever wrote. Scott was a long-winded writer, 
but who would have him shorten even "Count Rob- 
ert of Paris," or "Anne of Gierstein?" He was not 
so original as Dickens ; but on the merest hint of 
history he could weave a romance that vindicates 
the judgment of Swift that the imagination is a 
higher attribute of the human mind than the mem- 
ory. And speaking of "A Tale of a Tub," which, 
however, is an allegory and can scarce be put in the 
classification of novels, who would have it shorter? 
What a gigantic mind that conceived it! What 
marvelous genius that wrought it ! 

But to get back to the dean of them all — above 
Dumas, above Thackeray, above even Balzac or 
Dickens, the author of Waverly. Take up Quentin 
Durward, a long novel that was suggested by a visit 
the cunning scoundrel, Louis XI, paid to the ruf- 
fianly scoundrel, Chajles the Bold, and after we 
follow the beggarly Scottish youth from his tilt 
with the mighty Dunois, the best lance in Europe, to 



50 

the orgies of de la Marck upon the murder of the 
Bishop of Liege, we come to the meeting of the 
despots, the rage of the duke when Durward's tid- 
ings were communicated to him, his imprisonment 
of his sovereign and the craft of the traitor king. 
Then came the reconciHation, the treaty and the ex- 
pedition to Liege to punish the usurper. How in- 
tense is our interest when it is proclaimed the hand 
of Isabelle of Croye is to be the reward of him who 
shall slay the robber de la Marck, the Wild Boar 
of the Ardennes; how we hope that Quentin may 
be the fortunate one ! And then, when the battle is 
over Crevecoeur shows a boar's hide, such as the 
robber was wont to wear, and Dunois produced a 
cloven shield with de la Marck's armorial bearings, 
and each claimed to have slain the monster. We 
know that Quentin had brought the robber to bay 
and would have slain him had he not heard the cry 
of Trudchen, the daughter of Meinherr Pavillau, 
syndic of Liege, whom a French soldier had siezed 
as his prey. But it turned out all right. 

Old Ludovic Leslie, Quentin's uncle, showed the 
head of the robber and abdicated his right to claim 
the hand and fortune of the heroine in favor of his 
nephew and there was a happy marriage to con- 
clude the romance, as there should be in all good 
novels. 



The complaint that we lodge against Dumas is 
that he did not invent other adventures of the im- 
mortal Musketeers, that he did not add other vol- 
umes to the "Valois" series, tell more of Bussy d'Am- 
boise, give us more of Chicot. Why did he not pic- 
ture us Sully as he did Richelieu and Mazarin ? 



51 

We are ready to pick a quarrel with Balzac for 
dying at fifty-one. Here was perhaps the greatest 
man of letters since Swift, possibly since Shakes- 
peare. 

And Dickens, he of the creative faculty, why did 
he not give us other Sairy Gamps, Wilkins Micaw- 
bers, and Dick Swivellers ? Take that tea and punch 
drinking at the house of his immortal miscreant, Mr. 
Quilp, when Sampson Brass, and the excellent Mrs. 
Jiniwin were discussing the personal appearance of 
the departed one, and the lady maintained that her 
son-in-law's nose was pug, a decided pug. "Aqui- 
line, you hag; aquiline!" butted in the insolent 
scoundrel, who came to life when everybody was 
wishing that he had really been drowned, as had 
been reported, and some of us think that Dickens 
did violence to justice in rescuing him. Many of us 
might have thought some of Dickens' pathos had 
a faint, just a faint, sound of inferior metal, but all 
of us wish he had written a score more novels like 
"Martin Chuzzlewit" and "Nicholas Nickleby." 



Who ever tired of "Henry Esmond." the best 
picture of Queen Ann's time yet penned ? Where is 
more human nature compressed into two volumes 
than in "Tom Jones" and "Roderick Random?" 
Was there ever before or since such a wonderful 
courtship as that of My Uncle Toby and Widow 
Wadman ? — all long novels. 

The list is immense, and, put to the popular vote, 
the long novel will leave the short story out of 
sight in the rear. 



52 

MOSES AIKIN. 

The fashion that Ben Harrison and WilHam Mc- 
Kinley introduced of addressing crowds from their 
front porches when candidates for President reminds 
me of a stump speech I heard deHvered from a front 
porch a long time ago, when I was a small boy. It 
was in 1855, the year Beverley L. Clarke was the 
Democratic candidate for Governor of Kentucky. 
Charles S. Morehead was the opposing candidate. 
It was what is known in Kentucky politics as "Know 
Nothing Year." There was a great deal of political 
arrogance and intolerance floating around in South- 
ern Kentucky in those days. The speech I allude 
to was delivered by Clarke, and the scene was the 
front porch of the "Good Samaritan," a most hos- 
pitable tavern, kept by the late Esquire David Phil- 
pott and his good wife Jane in a village in the north 
extermity of what is now Metcalfe — then Barren — 
county, near the borders of Green and Hart counties. 
The village had several names — Frederick, Lafayette 
and Centre among others. 

Tradition has it that 1855 was a wondrously 
"fat year." Nature played the part of Lady Bounti- 
ful, and the fields, orchards, meadows, pastures and 
gardens and woods, fructified and brought forth as 
never before. The forests were groaning with mast, 
and the autumn heralded immense flocks of wild 
pigeons, followed in winter by myriads of robins 
roosting in the barrens, that were abandoned fields 
covered with scrub cedars. It was Goshen except 
for political disputation; it was Arcadia except for 
political rancor. 



53 

I remember it was a fearfully hot day; but there 
was a large crowd in attendance to hear the former 
Congressman of the "Bloody old Third," and no 
man of that day better deserved a large audience 
than "Lon" Clarke. The Know Nothings had sent 
over to Green county for the Rev. Moses Aikin to 
"answer" the Democratic champion. Lafayette is 
a "string" town, and at the southern extremity there 
stood the largest single room loghouse I ever saw, 
and I make no doubt it was the largest in all Ken- 
tucky; probably the largest in the world. It served 
for church: — or rather, "meeting house," as it was 
called — courthouse, schoolhouse and town hall. It 
was built by the founder of the village, Joseph Phil- 
pott, and presented to the community, a free offering. 
One o'clock came, and no Clarke; 2 o'clock came 
and still no Clarke. Aikin announced he would 
speak, and speak he did, and such a speech! It in- 
furiated every Democrat on the ground, several of 
whom denounced him in language that Gentleman 
Chucks would have envied. The Know Nothings 
were jubilant, and so they remained until near sun- 
down, when the crowd adjounred to the north end 
of the town, where was to be had plenty of liquid 
refreshment at five cents the tumblerful. 

Just as the sun hid his face in the forest to the 
west a carriage came tearing up from the south at 
breakneck speed. It halted in front of the Good 
Samaritan. A cheer went up from every Demo- 
cratic throat, for it was Beverley L. Clarke, just 
from Glasgow, where he had spoken twice that day. 
Night had come, and Blucher, too. 

"Will you speak here or at the meeting house, 
Lon?" asked Landlord Philpott, 



54 ■ ' 

"I want a dram, first thing," was the answer. 
Twenty willing hands seized him, and he was car- 
ried bodily inside, where a julip as long as your arm 
and nectar fit for gods was handed him. Then he 
announced he would speak from the front porch. 
He spoke for more than an hour, and no man ever 
held his crowd better. Numberless are the speeches 
I have heard since, but I have for more than 50 
years believed that Beverley L. Clarke's speech on 
that occasion was the best I ever heard. Aikin 
was there to answer him; but left before Clarke 
closed. The local Know Nothing lodge lost fifty- 
seven members at its next meeting, owing to that 
speech. 



Moses Aikin was an extraordinary man. It was 
said of a celebrated English statesman — Sir William 
Yonge — that nothing but such parts could buoy up 
such a character, and that nothing but such a char- 
acter could drag down such parts." The same might 
have been said of Moses Aikin. He was a tre- 
mendous man physically, weighing above 300 
pounds, and yet symmetrically formed and graceful in 
his movements. Physically he was a magnificent 
animal. He had a giant mind, but it was lamentably 
uncultivated. He know the Bible from lid to lid, 
and the Baptist commentaries on it, and he was 
master of a few other books. He was possessed of 
wonderful animal magnetism that rendered his ora- 
tory very effective on the stump or in the pulpit. He 
had acquired that habit of "sing song" that charac- 
terized the pulpit of rural Kentucky the first half 
of the century, and, strange to say, in his case it 
enhanced the charm of his oratory. The Hon. Web- 



55 

ster Davis is the only statesman I know who has 
that habit, but my advice to him is to get rid of it 
just as soon as possible. Had Moses Aikin possessed 
the virtue of self-denial, had he been able to subdue 
his passions, and had he been properly educated, I 
verily believe he would have been one of the first 
Americans of the century. But, alas, he could not 
resist Capua — Capua that "destroyed the bravest 
army which Italy ever saw, flushed with conquest 
and commanded by Hannibal." Few there are to 
overcome where Hannibal failed. 



Soon after the new courthouse was built at Ed- 
monton, Aikin attended Circuit Court there. The 
late T. T. Alexander was then Judge of that judicial 
district, and Aikin undertook to evangelize in that 
community. He got permission to preach in the 
courtroom one night, and no one who was present 
on that occasion will ever forget it. The cream of 
the bar of that circuit was there, some of them very 
able men, and all of them were under the spell of 
his genius before the meeting closed. Like Alcibi- 
ades, he seemed to have the audacity of conscious 
superiority. His text was Revelations xv., 3 : 

"And they sang the song of Moses, the servant 
of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and 
marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just 
and true are Thy ways. Thou King of Saints." 

The sermon he preached was one of the most 
powerful I ever heard. He had evidently read the 
works of Thomas Dick, the Christian philosopher, 
and a part of the sermon was a brief allusion to the 
solar system. I remember he cited that the world 
was moving through space at the rate of 14,000 



56 

miles an hour — I think that was the schedule; at 
any rate it was mighty rapid. When he got through 
with that statement he pointed his finger toward the 
audience, and in the most impressive manner imag- 
inable and with a solemnity that was awe-inspiring 
he said: "At some point on this planet's journey 
you must die." Now one-half of those he was ad- 
dressing looked upon him as the devil in a tub of 
holy water; they had no confidence in him whatever; 
but every one there was thrilled by that tone and 
manner. I have never seen an audience — not even 
in a theater — so completely swayed as he swayed 
his hearers that night. 

The man was a powerful personality. He split 
some of the Baptist churches in that community. 
The second and last time I heard him he was making 
a confession. It was a grand sermon. He acknowl- 
edged all that had been charged against him, and 
delared that he had been worse than his bitterest foe 
ever asserted or dreamed he had been — that the 
half, the tenth part, had not been told. Then he 
spoke of the infinite mercies of God, and related 
how he had carried his burden of sin to the cross 
of Cavalry and there left it. There was not a dry 
eye in the audience, and he closed with a pathos that 
was overpowering, almost sublime, and besought 
his enemies to do for him what God had done for 
him. Only yesterday I was reading a historical 
romance in which Nell Gwynne is one of the char- 
acters, and the author makes her say : 

"You're all so ready to call on God to forgive ! Is 
forgiveness God's only? Will none of you forgive 
for yourselves? Or are you so righteous that you 
can't do what God must?" 



57 

The words recalled to my mind Aikin's confes- 
sion and his appeal. It was under his preaching that 
the late Governor Thomas E. Bramlette made a pro- 
fession of religion. It was by Aikin that Bramlette 
was baptized, and had he been virtuous he would 
have been the foremost divine the Baptist Church 
of Kentucky ever knew. 



The last time I saw Aikin he was a prisoner in 
charge of a United States Deputy Marshall on board 
a railroad train speeding to Louisville to be tried in 
the Federal Court for making moonshine whisky. 
There is a tradition that he astonished the bench 
and bar when his case came on. He conducted his 
own defense, and, more lenient to him than to the 
late Judge George W. Craddock, Judge Ballard 
permitted him to attack the constitutionality of the 
Internal Revenue laws. He made a masterly argu- 
ment that electrified the bar if it did not move the 
court. He was then about four-score years old. Not 
a great while after he was summoned before the 
eternal bar, where all hearts will be searched. 

It was not the first time Aikin had been arrested. 
He was a Southern sympathizer, and spent a winter 
at Camp Chase. While there he addressed a curious 
letter to his old political friend, George D. Prentice, 
who printed it in the Journal and commented on it in 
characteristic style that occasioned much mirth. In 
prison with Aikin was the late Shelton Karris, of 
Barren county. Karris was too old to join the army ; 
but he was an intense Southern man, and one day 
he took his gun and started out to kill or cripple the 
whole Yankee army, then encamped at Munfordville. 
He landed in prison, and he and Aikin found them- 



58 

selves friends after an enmity of many years. There 
never were two men less alike, though both were 
exceedingly strong characters. 



One day a near neighbor and lifelong friend of 
Karris died. At the grave Karris was asked to say 
a few words. Looking on the features of his dead 
friend, he began his funeral oration : 

"My friends, thar lays as good a Dimocrat as rain 
ever wet or sun ever dried." 

Then he stepped back. Eulogy had been ex- 
hausted. 

MRS. SOUTHWORTH AND MR. BONNER. 

More than fifty years ago an excellent and gifted 
woman made her home in a villa on the banks of the 
Potomac in Georgetown. The scene was rural and 
romantic, made so by the beautiful river and the 
grove-covered and vine-clad hills of that vicinity. 
It was amid such surroundings that Emma Dorothy 
Eliza Nevitte Southworth wrote more than fifty 
novels, and made a name that is an American house- 
hold word. Never was there a writer more loyal 
to virtue ; never a healthier hatred of meanness and 
iniquity than that she inculcated. She never failed 
to reward the good, and she would not suffer the 
ultimate triumph of the wicked. She loved justice, 
and meted it out to the righteous, and she believed 
in vengeance and visited it upon the depraved, with 
even hand, and to each according to his desert. 

The most charming love story in all letters is the 
courtship and marriage of Boaz and Ruth, the alli- 
ance between the houses of Elimelech and Moab. 



59 

Though it was real, it shames the "reaHstic school." 
Balzac had transcendent genius, and we must rank 
him equal to Swift, of the English school ; or Hugo, 
of the French ; or Goethe, of the German — as a man 
of profane letters, inferior only to Shakespeare and 
Cervantes; but he always leaves a bad taste in your 
mouth. He was eternally murdering when it would 
have been just as easy to save, and he dispensed 
volumes of misery that he could just as well have 
made tomes of happiness. Nobody but a madman 
could have written "Cousin Bette," or "Cousin 
Pons," but they are work of a Titanic madman. 
Take Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels, and I will 
warrant that "Quentin Durward" has been read ten 
times where "St. Roman's Well" has been read once. 
Where is the boy who does not resent that unneces- 
sary murder Capt. Marryat perpetrated in the death 
of the hero of his otherwise excellent story of "The 
King's Own?" 

Mrs. Southworth was of the romantic school. She 
no more believed in the defeat of virtue than she 
believed in a bad breakfast, and if your appetite is 
poor take down one of her novels and read how she 
served a breakfast. She will immediately stimulate 
your imagination and you can almost taste the coffee, 
the toast, the biscuits, the cakes, the chops and the 
chicken. Mrs. Stowe was a woman of a single book, 
but Mrs. Southworth was pretty nearly what Donn 
Piatt said she was, the first American novelist. 



December 26, 1819, was born in the District of 
Columbia Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte. She was 
educated by her stepfather, Josiah L. Henshaw, and 
was graduated in 1835, before she was sixteen, and 



60 

thus must have evinced a remarkable precocity as 
well as the wonderful industry that characterized her 
maturer years. Before she was out of her teens she 
taught in the public schools of Washington, and 
even then her ever-busy pen was at work and pro- 
duced her first story, "The Irish Refugee," that gave 
promise of a genius that later was so prolifically de- 
veloped. This was soon followed by her first novel, 
"Retribution," with the publication of which her 
life work began. 

In 1840 Miss Nevitte became the wife of Maj. 
Frederick H. Southworth, of Utica, N. Y., and 
twelve years later she made her home in Georgetown, 
but a step from the banks of the beautiful stream 
that is to our people what the Tiber was to Rome, 
what the Thames is to England, what the Seine is 
to France. Here she wrote fifty novels, sometimes 
as many as three a year; here she made her name 
familiar to all reading America, and she so labored 
that tens of thousands of men and women, boys and 
girls, were drawn to her by the cords of her genius 
and the excellencies of her heart, and they were ever 
her friends. 



It is impossible to write of Mrs. Southworth with- 
out a mention of Robert Bonner and the New York 
Ledger. Where is the man or woman of three-score 
to whom these names do not bring pleasant memo- 
ries? In his sphere Bonner was a genius and a 
public benefactor. When Sir Walter Scott met the 
great financial reverse that engulfed his fortune, and 
made him a bankrupt, an English gentleman ex- 
claimed, "Scott broke ! If every man to whom he has 
given hours of delight would contribute to him a 



61 

shilling he would be the richest subject in Europe." 
And to millions Bonner gave hours of pleasure as 
he made his weekly visits during all the years he was 
the heart and the brains and the purse of the New 
York Ledger. It was called ''The Chambermaid's 
Organ," in derision, and it is true that its literature 
was inferior to Johnson and Goldsmith, but it was 
purer than Fielding and Smollett. They said it was 
"trash," but it was wholesome trash. It never taught 
an immoral lesson, and if it made boys and girls 
romantic, it never made a boy a rascal, or led a 
girl astray. There was not a line of it that could 
not be read aloud in the chastest family circle. It 
lived its day of usefulness and when the genius that 
made it so successful relaxed its hold and newer ideas 
were evolved out of old steam engine methods of 
progress the Ledger died, even as the epoch, of 
which it was an institution, fifty years ago, is dead. 



Bonner, was not a Yankee, but a Scotch-Irishman, 
not a Puritan, but a descendant of some stern Presby- 
terian, who had held Londonderry and fought in 
the victorious ranks of the soldiery that triumphed at 
the fight of Boyne Water. When James G. Blaine 
was a baby and Andrew Jackson was President, Rob- 
ert Bonner landed in America, a poor boy; nearly 
three score years and ten later he died a millionaire. 
He had health, strength, energy, industry, judgment, 
persistence, honesty, frugality, and sobriety. He 
was apprenticed to the printer's craft and became 
the best printer of every office in which he worked. 
His motto was, "The best is the cheapest," and that 
coupled with the fact that he was the most brilliant, 
adventurous and successful advertiser of his time. 



62 

made his fortune. The genius of the man was dis- 
closed in a success that made the "good will" of his 
periodical worth more than a million. 

Bonner was not a pioneer. Some years before his 
time there were some literary publications — weekly 
and illustrated — in Boston. The proprietor was a 
man named Gleason, and one of them was called 
"The Line of Battle Ship," a rather good name for 
the sort of paper it was. Another was "Gleason's 
Pictorial." No doubt there are garrets in many 
American farmhouses in which are stowed away 
copies of these publications. Ben Perley Poore was 
a voluminous contributor to them, and my recollec- 
tion is that his novels were in the main historical — 
that is, he wrote mainly romance, the scenes of which 
were laid during our war for independence. His 
heroes were American patriots of the Continental 
army and his villians were ruffians of the British 
army, and the Tories. They were not up to "Henry 
Esmond," or "The Tale of Two Cities," but they 
were good patriotic reading, and some bloody fight- 
ing, in nearly all of which we licked the British and 
Tories. 

Poore was a Washington correspondent the last 
twenty years of his life, representative of the Boston 
Journal, as I now recollect. He was the dean of the 
press gallery when Gibson, Ramsdell, McCulloch, 
Piatt, Redfield, Buell and their splendid set gave a 
vigor, syle and strength, and finish to newspaper- 
dom that is the despair of the cloth of today. 



No doubt Bonner got the idea that conceived the 
Ledger from Gleason's publications, and he made 
the venture a success by means of the most ex- 



63 

tensive and the most attractive advertising that had 
theretofore been practiced. He caused the Ledger 
to be known in every community and made it a wel- 
come visitor in tens of thousands of households. 
He made millions out of it, and though he was per- 
haps the most daring, and certainly the most brilliant 
advertiser of his time, the Ledger never contained a 
line of advertising other than the simple announce- 
ment of its terms to subscribers. Every other line 
of it was pure reading matter. 



It was about 1858 that "The Hidden Hand" 
was first printed in the Ledger. It was Mrs. South- 
worth's greatest novel, and so popular did it become 
that Bonner ran it as a serial in the Ledger several . 
times, at intervals of two or three years. What man 
or woman of three score to-day does not remember 
how popular it was and what a run it had? What 
neighborhood of the Atlantic slope, or the Missis- 
sippi Valley, is without a blooming matron christen- 
ed "Capitola," some forty years ago, in compliment 
to Mrs. Southworth and in admiration of, and affec- 
tion for, her dashing heroine? There was Maj. 
Ira Warfield, "Old Hurricane," a fine type of the old 
Virginia cavalier, a greater and better "Peveril of 
the Peak," a delicious Baron Bradwardine brought 
down to 1845 from 1745. There was "Mrs. Condi- 
ment," his housekeeper — was there ever happier 
name for such a station? — who knew what a good 
breakfast was and how to have it prepared and 
served. There was "Wool," "Old Hurricane's" 
colored body servant, typical of a class we shall 
look upon no more forever, and "Pitapat," "Capi- 
tola's" colored maid, also typical of a class, to form 



64 

whom is as much a lost art as the forging of the 
Damascus blade. There was Herbert Grayson, a 
right down good fellow and dashing soldier, but 
scarce good enough for Capitola Black, though she 
married him. There were Mrs. Rock and Travis 
Rock, her son, and Col. Le Noir — all these of the 
warp and woof of this charming narrative. And 
there, too, was "Black Donald" most formidable and 
interesting of outlaws — an American Robin Hood 
and Jack Shepherd in one, the robber in colleague 
with Le Noir, the villain of the story. Nor should 
the delightful hamlet of Tiptop, the scene of the 
narrative, be forgotten. There are 10,000 men and 
women who would enjoy a stroll through its high 
street and its lanes. 

"The Hidden Hand" was dramatized and played 
in every town in the country that had a theater. 
It was immensely popular and no doubt made sev- 
eral fortunes for Mr. Bonner. Mrs. Southworth 
was not a novelist of the first class — far from it — but 
be sure that you will never, as man, enjoy Fielding 
or Goldsmith or Scott or Dumas or Thackeray or 
Dickens unless, as boy, you enjoyed the "Hidden 
Hand" or "Ishmael" or "The Doom of Deville" or 
"The Curse of Clifton" or "Rose Elmer" and the 
rest of them. 



Sylvanus Cobb, jr., was another regular con- 
tributor to the Ledger, and "The Gunmaker of 
Moscow" was almost as popular as "The Hidden 
Hand," and had as many lives in the Ledger as 
Mrs. Southworth's famous novel. Cobb was a most 
prolific writer, and his novels narratives of adven- 
ture of the heroic mold. Emerson Bennett was an- 



65 

other regular contributor. His were frontier stories, 
making virtuous our oppressions and robberies of 
the red man. Miss Dupuy, WilHam Henry Peck, 
Amy Randolph, J. F. Smith and many others were 
constant contributors of love stories that added im- 
mensely to the popularity of the publication. 

Other contributions were James Gordon Bennett, 
editor and founder of the New York Herald ; Hor- 
ace Greeley, editor and founder of the New York 
Tribune; Henry J. Raymond, editor and founder 
of the New York Times, and George D. Prentice, 
editor and founder of the Louisville Journal. To 
these must be added William Cullen Bryant, editor 
of the New York Evening Post, one of our most 
distinguished poets, while other poets who con- 
tributed to the Ledger were Longfellow, Saxe, Mor- 
ris, Willis, Sigourney and the Carey sisters. Ten- 
nyson wrote one poem for which the Ledger paid 
him $5,000. 



Mr. Bonner also secured a story by Dickens at 
frightful cost, but it was worth the money for 
Dickens was then at the zenith of his powers and 
the summit of his popularity. Twelve of the lead- 
ing clergymen of America contributed papers, as 
did twelve leading college professors. Who does not 
recollect Fanny Fern, who wrote, exclusively for 
the Ledger, those breezy papers that made her a 
favorite from ocean to ocean? Edward Everett 
contributed the "Mount Vernon Papers," for which 
the Ledger paid $10,000 to be devoted to the Mount 
Vernon fund. 

Bonner was bound to have the best, and would 
have no other, and so it came that when he estab- 



66 

lished a chess department, Paul Morphy, the most 
famous player of the game in the world, was the 
editor of it at a large salary. 

To conclude, Mr. Bonner was a public benefactor, 
and Mrs. Southworth was an example of noble 
womanhood. 



LUXURY. 

A big, portly, burly 'possum, hoary with the fat 
that comes from polkberries in August, pawpaws in 
September, and persimmons after October's frost 
has made saccharine the astringent juice of that 
noble fruit. Take, I say, a bird like that, butcher 
him as Caesar should have been carved, let his 
lordly carcass take the frost of at least two fine 
nights after 

-chill November's surly blasts 



Make fields and forests bare. 

Take that fellow, cook him with an art com- 
mensurate with his aristocracy in the realm of game 
and gastronomy, and you have a dish fit to have been 
served from Juno's kitchen, when Jupiter had for 
guests Jason's mighty crew. 

Catch this gentleman by shaking him out of a 
sapling in which he had been "treed" by a dog of 
the name of Hector ; but on no account allow Hector 
or other more plebian dorg to worry him. Have a 
split hickory stick and insert Mr. Possum's tail in it, 
and so carry him home in triumph and confine him 
in an empty barrel in the smokehouse. Mr. M. B. 
Morton, of^ Nashville, Tenn., says the dorg should 



67 

be named "Clinker." There might be polemic about 
that. 



The next morning, bright and early give that 
'possum into the custody of one of our colored 
fellow-citizens of the old school, who understands his 
business. He will lay the handle of the ax across 
the varmint's neck and put an enormous foot on 
the hickory of it, on either side, and then take the 
animal J)y the tail and pull with all his might until 
the neck is broken. That is the way to kill a 'pos- 
sum. I have heard of barbarians shooting them. I 
never saw it, and would not for any consideration 
allow it in my presence. Meanwhile, have a 
cauldron of boiling water at hand, in which had been 
somewhat dissolved a small quantity of fresh hickory 
ashes right out of the fireplace. Blood in sufficiency 
had come from the ears and mouth of the 'possum, 
if the executioner knew his business — my old play- 
fellow. Alec, could turn the trick to an exactitude — 
and now, while the carcass is yet warm, plunge him 
into the scalding water and pick him bare of every 
hair, and do it rapidly. Then dress him and put 
him away to cool. 

That night, the following night, and even the 
third night, let him take the frost in the open air, and 
he would be all the better if frozen stiff. 



And here is the way old Aunt Car'line used to 
cook him. She boiled him till he was tender as 
butter in water that had floating around sundry pods 
of red pepper. This became impregnated with the 
fat of the varmint, and she stewed it to the con- 



68 

sistency of thick gravy, after lifting his majesty out 
of it. 

Now, here is where Aunt Car'Hne and her lord 
and master, Uncle Archie, could not agree. The 
old woman wanted to put him in an oven with 
sweet taters and brown him. Archie preferred 
roasting the taters in the hot embers of the hickory 
wood fire, and barbecuing the 'possum before the 
fire, bathing him every five minutes in the gravy 
that resulted from his boiling, and finishing off with 
the taters in the oven in which was first poured the 
gravy. I have tried both. Solomon could not have 
made judgment betwixed the different methods of 
Aunt Car'line and Uncle Archie. Either would 
cause any common man to swallow his tongue about 
the middle of the feast. 



But that is not all. Man lives by bread as well as 
by 'possum. When I was a boy the forest area of 
Barren County, Ky., was perhaps five times what it 
is now, and frost, "killing" frost, was always tardy, 
and ofttimes as late as All Saints' Day. Every 
farmer had his late patch of corn for roasting ears 
during October. In the last days of that month the 
corn was in the "dough," and when it got a little 
harder, it was plucked, shucked and grated, as you 
would a nutmeg on a tin grater as big as a full 
sheet of foolscap paper, bended over a board. Talk 
about corn meal! — that's the stuff; but the season 
cannot last above two weeks, otherwise we would 
get too proud to die. And it is likely that feeding 
on such, daily, we would not die at all, we would 
stay so virtuous. 



69 

There is your meal. Make your dough of that 
meal and pure spring water, fashion it into "pones," 
put them in a hot skillet covered with a hot lid, on 
which is heaped live coals, and bake rapidly, very 
rapidly, and you have the very best bread in the 
world, and the most wholesome ever. It is 
nearly as good shortened, and it is delicious as hoe 
cake, journey cake, or ashcake. Try it with 'possum. 



Some time ago I tried to tell what should follow a 
feast of pot-licker, a broth of equal excellence with 
'possum or roast goose, or roast turkey, or fried 
chicken, or hog's jowl and turnip sallet, or sparerib 
and backbone, or country sausage, and as promotive of 
felicity and longevity. I allude to a quid of tobacco. 
I have not now that composition before me; but 
when I saw it in print I realized that I had been 
guilty of a series of omissions, and as I have been 
asked to repeat the thing by sundry persons, who 
never knew it except from hearsy, I shall now 
propose a new and more accurate edition, as follows, 
viz : 

In the first place, the "barrens" of Kentucky is the 
land where the tobacco plant attains its acme. 
There, on a frosty morn' in autumn, the virgin soil 
of the woods exudes saltpetre and is fertile enough 
for hemp or turnip without embarrassment to its 
exhaustless energies. That was when I was a boy. 
Rocky, rough, a sinkhole on every farm; subter- 
ranean streams, draining every square mile; the 
Mammoth Cave, just across the line ; the vegetable 
growth scrub hickory, scrub post oak, wild grape- 
vine, dense hazelnut thicket, here a black walnut, 
there a red dogwood — everywhere May apple, per- 



70 

haps from the mandrakes with which Leah hired 
Jacob of Rachel. 

Go here and clear a patch in the late June or 
early July, digging up all the stumps possible; pile 
the brush and get all the rails you can of the post 
oaks and haul off the fire wood. Leave the debris 
to rot till a dry spell in January ; then set it afire, and 
dig up the remaining stumps. Now plow it with a 
jumping coulter ahead of a very narrow "bull 
tongue" and harrow, piling the roots. Repeat this 
operation when the winds of March have made the 
ground dry enough for the plow after the rains, the 
sleets, the freezes and the thaws of February. Get 
every root out of the way, and again in April go 
over it, plow and harrow. In May, about the 15th, 
plow and harrow a fourth time, "lay the ground 
off" as for corn, three feet each way, and then 
transplant the tobacco from the bed. They used to 
make hills for this, but that has been found to be 
unnecessary labor. When the plants have been set 
for some eighteen days, go over the ground with the 
hoe and destroy all vegetable growth but the tobacco, 
and be sure that your plant is of the yellow prior 
variety. If you neglect that precaution all your labor 
is vain. Your tobacco will not be fit to chew. 

Now, put the cultivator to it — that is, plow it a^ 
you do corn, and cultivate it with double shovel and 
hoe frequently — this tobacco is for local domestic 
use, not for market. Early in July "prime" the 
plant and "prime," high enough — that is, take off 
the bottom leaves that rest on the ground. By the 
10th of August "top" the plant, leaving from four- 
teen to sixteen leaves on it. Now "succor" it and 
"worm" it daily, and a successful way to "worm" is 



71 

by prevention, as follows: Grow jimson weed on 
the edge of the patch, put in the blossom a syrup in 
which a pinch or two of cobalt had been dissolved. 
It is a great labor-savor. 



Keep the suckers off and the worms off, and let 
the tobacco get dead ripe. The dews of cool early 
autumn nights help it immensely, giving it body and 
developing the nicotine. I heard a man who knew 
nothing in the world about tobacco sing the praises 
the other day of a pipe that took the nicotine out 
of the tobacco before the smoke got to the palate. I 
ventured to say to him that I would as soon smoke 
corn fodder or drink whiskey from which all alcohol 
had been banished. Nobody ever chewed or smoked 
or snuffed tobacco except for its nicotine, and nobody 
ever drank whiskey or wine or beer except for the 
alcohol of it — as well drink stump water. 

Then, on some glorious morn of splendid and 
opulent October, the season of incipient Indian sum- 
mer, when the fodder is in the shock — but ere the 
frost is on the pumpkin — when the dew is heavy 
and the air is crisp — when the magnificent sun of 
such a day is well on his course in the heavens — 
go into the patch and "cut" the tobacco, hang it on 
the "stick," and never let it touch mother earth. 
Take it to the scaffold, improvised in the patch, of 
rails or poles, and let it there "yaller" until it is as 
the hickory leaf turned golden at the first touch of 
autumnal frost. Let it hang for twenty-four or 
forty-eight hours, then house it in a barn tight 
enough to exclude the light, and almost tight enough 
to exclude the air. Two days later fire it by means 
of charcoal, heating the building to that degree that 



72 

drives the sap from the leaf to the stalk, and makes 
the stalk as dry as last year's corn shuck. 



When the welcome rain of November that patters 
on the roof and makes sleep the sweetest of all God's 
blessings has brought the leaf in "case," strike it 
down and "strip" it, selecting the choicest leaves for 
chewing. Then "bulk" it, and as carefully as though 
you were putting it in the hogshead to compete for 
a prize. In March "hang" it again, so that the winds 
may make it as dry as Tophet's powder-house, until 
it turns to snuff at the slightest touch. April showers 
will bring it in "case," when it must again be bulked 
with all the care and tenderness and nicety of the 
November bulking, with this addition : Sprinkle on 
each layer a handful of sun-dried peaches — about a 
peck of peaches to each 100 pounds of tobacco. 

And so, let it be. The "sweat" will come in the 
latter part of May. Take it up some time between 
the summer solstice and July 10, stem it, lightly 
spray it with old peach brandy in which new poplar 
honey has been dissolved. Twist it, not more than 
seven leaves to the twist, and not too tight; lay it 
away in an air-tight chest of oak that has been in the 
household, time out of mind, and when pot-licker 
time comes, the following November, take a twist 
of that tobacco and it will beat anything for chewing 
that ever came off the land drained by Jeemses 
River, and for smoking nothing ever came out of 
Cuba to compare with it — if you employ a home- 
made corncob pipe. And a quid of it stowed away in 
your cheek after a hearty meal of hog's jowl, turnip 
sallet, poached eggs and corn bread, in March, will 
make you drop into sweet and pleasant reverie. 



13 

No wonder some forty vermifuge doctors starved 
to death in Barren County, where the folk in those 
days lived on 'possum, goose, and pumpkin bread, 
and chewed and smoked that sort of tobacco. The 
very children perpetuated the virility of their dads 
and mams. 



A SARCHING CUP OF TEA. 

It was the abundantly fat year of 1855. Ceres, 
Pomona and Sylvanus all yielded exuberant plenty 
like unto Goshen. The fields laughed from flower to 
fruit and the barns groaned with prolific bounty 
when the season come of which the poet wrote : 

The kiss that would make a maid's cheek flush 

Wroth, as if kissing were a sin. 
Admidst the Argus eyes and din 

And tell-tale glare of noon, 
Brings but a murmur and a blush, 

Beneath the Harvest moon. 

It was the May election, the Calends of that 
beautiful month, when every precinct in old Ken- 
tucky met in local inquest to choose one of its citizen.= 
to fill the office of Constable. In the La Fafayette 
precinct of Barren County, two young men, who had 
just attained to their majority, were candidates — 
Wilburn Strader and Frank Hiser. Both were 
popular, both of the flower of that splendid citizen- 
ship. 



It was "Know-Nothing year," and though both 
Strader and Hiser were of Democratic families, both 
were members of tTie secret political order that 



74 

swept over Kentucky in 1855, as it had over Massa- 
chusetts the year before. Frank Hiser was the 
favorite of eleven children born to Captain Hiser 
and his good wife — four sons and seven daughters. 
The Captain was one of the two voters of the La 
Fayette precinct who did not join the Know- 
Nothings. Strader was a clerk in the store of 
Joseph Altsheler, father of the popular novelist 
now of New York city, whose writings bring intel- 
lectual pleasure and profit to thousands of readers. 
The store was just across the line in Hart County, at 
Three Springs, but most of its custom came from 
Barren, where Strader had his citizenship. Altsheler, 
being of foreign birth, of course, was anti-Know- 
Nothing, and, like Captain Hiser, in the case of his 
son, the merchant was sure his clerk was a Democrat 
and lent him his powerful influence in the election. 

Never was there a more hotly contested race even 
in that community. The election was viva voce and 
each voter, when his name was recorded, announced 
his choice, and fraud in the count was simply im- 
possible, for each candidate had a friend and guard 
to see that the vote was recorded as cast, and every 
one saw that it was counted as recorded. Kentucky 
was the last State to substitute the ballot box for the 
poll-book. 



Just before the time for the close of the polls the 
candidates were tied with 174 votes each. The 
"Cavalry" of each party had been busy since 9 
o'clock in the forenoon, bringing voters from their 
farms and now less than a dozen of that entire elec- 
torate were unrecorded. When they thought all the 
votes cast except those of the candidates and the four 



75 

election officials, of whom two were for Hiser and 
two for Strader, Captain Hiser led his son up to the 
polls and made him vote for Strader, though it is 
due to say that he required no urging. It recalled 
Fontenoy, when the household troops of France said 
to the English : "Gentlemen, will you be so good as 
to fire first?" Strader's friends sought him and 
carried him to the polls and it was with a thrill of 
pleasure that he, too, voted for his competitor, and 
again the race was tied, and it was supposed that the 
ultimate result would be determined by lot, as the 
law provided, when up came Wick Fansher, one of 
Altsheler's customers, and voted for Strader, and 
thus he was elected. 

There are old men in that community, boys then, 
grandsires now, who recall that well-fought day 
and they also recall the surprise of Captain Hiser and 
Merchant Altsheler when they found that they both 
had been supporting a Know-Nothing for public 
office. 



However, it was not of that election it was my 
purpose to write, but of a farmous Cup of Coffee. 
There lived at that time in the Green River hills 
of Hart County, one Eliphalet Jarvis, a natural 
born vagabond, whose ostensible trade was that of 
grindstone-maker. He had gypsy blood in his veins 
and pretended to tell the fortunes of the credulous, 
mostly negroes, and thus, whiskey being cheap, he 
acquired enough by this fraud to supply him with 
liquor enough to keep "pretty particular drunk," as 
Lawyer Pleydell's housemaid said of Lawyer Pley- 
dell's clerk in "Guy Mannering." On the day of the 
election in May, 1855, "Lif," as everybody called 



76 

him, went over to La Fayette to spend the day with 
his boon companion, "Hypocrite Bill" Pierce, who 
was so designated to distinguish him from "Syca- 
more Bill" Pierce, over on Little Barren River. 
They were not of kin and no very good friends. 

"Hyp" Pierce was an indispensable if there ever 
was one. When the stable of Captain John Mat- 
thews, below Glasgow, met on neutral turf the stable 
of Andy Barnett, of Green County, at the race 
course at La Fayette to contest for the supremacy 
of the Upper Green River section, which is the cream 
of the Pennyrile, "Hyp" was the official starter 
He was expert with a deck of cards, and it took a 
hand-and-a-half to match him at "old sledge." He 
superintended every shooting match, and slaughtered 
the beef that was prize of that rivalry. He was 
master of ceremonies at a score of cornshuckings 
every season. When the circus show came along 
"Hyp" was the first citizen of the village and hail 
fellow well met with chariot driver and clown. In 
short, he was a man of superlative "anagosity," the 
most delicious vagabond in all the world. It is a 
calamity to human nature that Charles Dickens did 
not meet "Hypocrite Bill" Pierce. 



On the occasion of the May election at La Fayette 
in 1855 "Hyp" and "Lif" met and had a grand and 
glorious time. Early and late they were down at the 
big spring passing a bottle of good whiskey back 
and forth like two men working a cross-cut saw. 
By nightfall both were disastrously drunk and "Lif" 
went home with "Hyp," when the latter would take 
no denial. 

"Hyp" lived on the edge of Lick Swamp with his 



77 

good wife, Sarah, and his children, none of the latter 
at home on that occasion, however. "Buck," the 
eldest boy, was that season a farm hand at Waddy 
Thompson's ; Dick was the handy man at the Good 
Samaritan Tavern. Ike, Tempest Ann and Sally 
were gone to their Uncle Zeke Neal's to a dance held 
to celebrate the victory of "Burn" Strader at the 
polls that day. 

Blessedly encumbered with a quart bottle of 
whiskey, "Hyp'^ and "Lif" managed to reach the 
domicile of the former where the good wife, Sarah, 
greeted her lord's friend with smiles of hospitality 
that were warrant of good cheer, for she was a 
famous cook. 

"Lif" was mighty fond of coffee and he loved it 
strong. "Hyp" and Sarah did not touch it except 
for breakfast. Sarah ordered "Hyp" to go to the 
spring and fetch a bucket of water to make a pot 
of coffee for "Lif," who was not satisfied with less 
than half a dozen cups at a meal. "Hyp" seized the 
bucket and started for the gum spring in the dark, 
and it so happed that, mistaking the spring, he 
dipped a bucket of lye out of a tub where Sarah 
had been making soap. Returning to the house that 
was dimly lighted with a tallow dip, Sarah made 
the coffee of lye instead of water and put it on the 
table steaming hot. It was a good supper of country 
sausage from a corn shuck, a spring chicken, fried, 
and broiled ham, with corn pone and biscuit. 



At table "LTf" managed to get away with a large 
cup of the coffee and "Hyp" cursed his friend's 
gizzard for rebelling, but after much insistance on 
the part of both his friends, "Lif" gingerly passed 
the empty cup back with remark, "Half a cup, 
Madam, half a cup, please. It's damned sarching." 



78 



A LAY SERMON. 



It was when there were yet Yankee soldiers in 
Kentucky and there was a garrison at Lebanon, in 
the county of Marion. Down in Barren County 
was an honest man, and a homely ; he had few of this 
life's goods and chattels, but he had what was better 
— a guileless heart, a conscience void of offense 
toward his neighbor, a strength to bear small ills 
and the perpetual good humor that good health and 
no evil thought ever bring. His appetite was good ; 
his sleep was sound. He was more to be envied by 
the philosopher than the victor of Actium, or Hast- 
ings. His name was David Faulkner, and it came 
to Mr. Faulkner to enter the stormy sea of trade that 
can show more shipwrecks than argosies safely 
harbored. 

He was a simple-minded man, was David, and 
he was no fool — he was a single-minded man, was 
David, for he was no rogue. Mr. Faulkner got 
tidings that the article of food known as beans was 
scarce in the Yankee camp and in great demand at a 
high price, and he determined to venture as a 
mechant. Now your merchant to be successful must 
be as wary a buyer as he is shrewd a seller. David 
was a poor buyer — the simplest rogue in all Metcalfe 
County could read him like a book. He knew this, 
did David — that to sell beans he must have beans, 
and he had no beans ; he must buy them before he 
could sell them. And so he went abroad among the 
farmers and their wives and he bought regardless of 
price. When he had secured a wagon load they 
were perhaps the most costly, the highest priced lot 
of beans merchant ever had. But that was not all, 



79 

nor the worst. In those days they raised in around 
Chicken Bristle a "cornfield" bean that was all black, 
entirely black. In David's cargo were some bushels of 
this black bean, which he had bought from old Aunt 
Jenny Trusty at a very high price. The Yankees 
seemed to be prejudiced again the black bean, and 
when David made the journey of fifty miles and 
exposed his wares in camp he met with sore dis- 
appointment. There is a law of physics that a 
chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and there 
is a law of trade that an article of merchandise is 
no better than its worst sample. The Yankees could 
see nothing but the black beans in David's cargo, 
and they would offer no more for the whole lot than 
they were willing to pay for a cargo of all black. 
David was bound to sell, for he was as guileless as 
Moses Primrose — he of the spectacles — and his ven- 
ture was just about as disastrous. 

There was another very excellent man in that 
neighborhood of Barren County. He had financed, 
underwritten, J. Pierpont Morganed the enterprise — 
his name was Lonney Thompson. Honest man that 
he was David made an elaborate and a particular 
report of the transaction to Mr. Thompson, and 
closed with the mournful remark, "But the bean was 
black." 



Now David was unconscious of the fact that he 
only gave expressoin to a truth that was profound, 
when that other David was King of Israel, and 
was rebuked of sin by the Prophet Nathan. "There 
were two men in one city; the one rich, and the 
other poor." And then Nathan proceeded to talk 
about the ewe lamb which the poor man had bought 



80 

and nourished up; of the stranger that came to the 
rich man, and of the ravishment of the poor man's 
ewe, and closed with "Thou art the man." And 
David fasted, and went in and lay all night upon 
the earth. 

It was a truth profound when Solomon, in cedar 
palace, sang about vanity. Indeed, it is a truth that 
has attended and waited on mankind, Christian, 
infidel and pagan, since the father of us all ate the 
fruit set before him by the mother of us all. It is 
the truth that comes to the Pope in the Vatican, to 
the humblest priest of his hierarchy, and to the 
humblest parishioner of the humblest priest. It came 
to Alexander of Macedonia, when he awakened 
from drunken slumber to remember that he had as- 
sassinated his friend and foster brother, and it came 
to greater Caesar, as he fell at the foot of Pompeii's 
pillar and said : "et tu Brutus," which may be trans- 
lated — "The bean was black." 



The King, with the crown upon his head, the 
purple on his bodv and the sceptre in his hand, 
comes to know "The bean was black." And the 
shepherd, with crook in hand, attending his flock, 
realizes the same mournful and inevitable truth. My 
lady, aJorned in richest robe, bedecked with richest 
jewels, brazen with the lust of gain, and wanton 
with the lust of pleasure, finds in the end — "The 
bean was black." Great Bismarck found it so, and 
he came very nearly cursing God about it. He was 
the royal Bengal tiger of diplomacy, and statesman- 
ship, but he found "The bean was black." The 
great Napoleon was a far greater Bismarck, but he 
found "The bean was black." 



81 

He ate the black bean amid the snow and ice of 
Russia. It was in that mutton stew at Leipsic, and 
it came with the rain the night of June 17, when for 
the second time, he lost his crown at Waterloo. 



And so it goes, and ever was, since Cain planted 
the black bean in Eden and watered it with the blood 
of his murdered and innocent brother — and so it 
must be until time unvails eternity. He of Galilee 
came, despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow 
and acquainted with grief. He came to tread the 
wine-press for us and eat our black beans for us. He 
ate, for it was written that He should taste death for 
you and me. But they crucified him because He ate 
of black beans with publicans and sinners — men and 
women like you and me. But though we must all 
eat of the bean that is black in the end, we shall find 
there is balm in Gilead, and a physician there. 



SECOND BOOK 



Men, Things 

and 

Events 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 

"Nature form'd but one such man. 
And broke the die, in molding." 

Wherever fire burns or water runs ; wherever ship floats or 
land is tilled ; wherever the skies vault themselves or the lark 
carols to the dawn, or sun shines or earth greens to his ray; 
wherever God is worshipped in temples or heard in thunder; 
wherever man is honored or woman loved — there from hence- 
forth and forever, shall there be to him no part or lot in the 
honor of man or the love of woman. Ixion's revolving wheel, 
the overmantling cup at which Tantalus may not slake his un- 
quenchable thirst, the insatiate gnawing at the immortal heart 
of Prometheus, the rebel giants writhing in the volcanic fires 
of Aetna — are but faint types of his doom. 

And that anathema one Harrison Gray Otis has 
courted in his declaration that Robert E. Lee was a 
traitor. 

Here is what I had to say about it at the time : 

Only the other day all that is patriotic in Amer- 
ican citizenship, all that is excellent in American 
manhood, all that is noble in American character 
joined to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 
birth of Robert E. Lee and pay tribute to as lofty, as 
illustrious, as grand a figure as any with whom the 
history of men and nations has ever dealt. But 
there was a discordant sound — a Caliban obtruded 
on the scene. It is written : "Now, there was a 
day when the sons of God came to present them- 
selves before the Lord, and Satan came also among 
them." 

The Los Angeles Times took advantage of the 
occasion to pour the venom of its scurrility and 
slander on the memory of the great captain, whose 



86 

military genius made Scott's march from Vera Cruz 
to the city of the Montezumas an unbroken victory, 
one of the fruits of which is the Statehood of CaH- 
fornia in the American Union. Harrison Gray Otis 
is supposed to control the political and moral de- 
partments of the paper mentioned in the foregoing, 
and here is one of his opinions : 

Although it may be that President Roosevelt could not with 
propriety have brought out certain great historical truths ; 
that he could not fitly have said things of vastly greater im- 
portance than anything he did say, it is obvious to the Times 
that the occasion should not be allowed to pass without stat- 
ing these pregnant facts. Due regard for the highest patriot- 
ism and for historic truth demand that they be not ignored. 
It will not do to let Gen. Robert E. Lee be held up before the 
eyes of the rising generation as a knight without reproach, 
as the type of American manhood to be taken as a model, as 
a patriot to be revered and imitated. The distinction between 
a Robert E. Lee and a Ulysses S. Grant is vital and must not 
be overlooked. It is essential to draw the line today as it 
was in the sixties. 



Then this paper proceeds to admit the splendid 
soldierly qualities of Lee, the skill with which he 
fought and the fortitude with which he endured, and 
all that, after which it sends this Parthian arrow : 

Nevertheless, after these things have been said, it is impera- 
tive to say one or two things more, namely that Robert E. Lee 
was a traitor to his country, that he fired on the flag, that he 
was false to his oath, and that his career should not and 
cannot be an inspiration to youth. Happily, there is no danger 
of rekindling animosities by the presentation of these his- 
toric facts. The embers of sectional hatred are dead ; but the 
fires of patriotism still grow, and they must be fed with the 
everlasting principles of truth and righteousness. Never 
shall it be forgotten that the civil war was not a quarrel over 
differences of opinion, but was a mighty struggle between 
loyalty and treason, between right and wrong — and that Rob- 
ert E. Lee's sword was drawn in dishonor and sheathed in 
humiliation. These are not agreeable things to write, and it 



87 

may be that President Roosevelt could not have written them 
without needless affront to the Lee committee, but it would 
be treachery to all sacred verities that the Stars and Stripes 
wave for to leave these things unsaid. 

I do not discover in that a very fulsome compli- 
ment to Theodore Roosevelt. As I read it, the 
President is charged with such moral cowardice as 
makes him put truth behind him when confronted 
with a "propriety" in front of him. Gen. Lee 
taught that when one could not speak truth it was 
his duty not to speak at all. Gen. Otis preaches 
that it is given to truth to surrender to good man- 
ners. There is a difference. 



"Happily there is no danger of kindling animosi- 
ties by the presentation of these historic facts" — 
indeed there is not; Gen. Otis has seen to it that 
the animosities, so far as he is concerned, are ex- 
actly what they were when Gen. Lee was dis- 
franchised and his former slaves made voters. "The 
embers of sectional hatred are dead," but one must 
read Charles Francis Adams, not Harrison Gray 
Otis, to find it out. 

This man Otis has forgot some of his rhetoric. 
He ought to chop patriotism with "King Bob" Ken- 
nedy, of Ohio, who put it this way : "The North 
was eternally right, and the South was eternally 
wrong," a passage that admirably and precisely 
served for text for Moloch's stump speech in hell, 
when he was drumming up troops for another cam- 
paign against the Almighty. Again, Otis says that 
it shall never be forgotten that "the civil war was 
not a quarrel over differences of opinion, but was 
a mighty struggle between loyalty and treason." 



88 

But everybody save Otis has forgotten it, and if 
he will chop logic w^ith Henry Cabot Lodge he will 
learn that the South had the butt cut of constitu- 
tional law on the principle of secession in 1861. 
However, the sword settled that quarrel, and settled 
it exactly as the sword has settled every other 
quarrel since Cain slew Abel — that is to say, there 
will be no more secession in this country until the 
stronger shall pull away from the weaker. That 
is all the war settled so far as secession is concerned, 
all it could settle. 

How easy and how natural for us to say : "I am 
right and you are wrong; I am a patriot and you 
are a traitor; I am a child of God and you are an 
imp of the devil." That is all Otis says, and all 
that Otis means. There is nothing new in it. It is 
the preachment of Cain and of Moloch. It stoned 
Stephen, it broiled Lawrence, it kindled the fagots 
Calvin employed to vindicate heaven and confound 
perdition. It sounded the tocsin of Bartholomew's 
Eve, and nerved the assassins of Glencoe's night. It 
believes in the donjon, the rack, the block, the stake. 
It has made 10,000 hells on earth and to it the awful 
interrogation, "Where is thy brother?" has but one 
answer: "Am I my brother's keeper?" 



Let us turn from Otis and his "patriotic" arro- 
gance, his despotic fanaticism, and learn a lesson 
of love and charity in the beautiful lines of that 
noble woman, author of the Battle Hymn of the 
Republic, who thus wrote of the great Confederate 
chieftain : 



89 

A gallant foeman in the fight, 

A brother when the fight was o'er, 

The hand that led the host with might 
The blessed torch of learning bore. 

No shriek of shells nor roll of drums, 
No challenge fierce, resounding far, 

When reconciling Wisdom comes 
To heal the cruel wounds of war. 

Thought may the minds of men divide, 
Love makes the heart of nations one, 

And so, thy soldier grave beside. 
We honor thee, Virginia's son. 

Could Julia Ward Howe think that of a traitor? 
All womanhood answers no. 



Will men of the Otis ilk never learn that in the 
Constitution of the United States was planted the 
seed of our sectional strife, and that there was no 
possible way to avoid the war that came m lool, 
and a war that would have come if every Southern 
State had voluntarily emancipated its slaves a gener- 
ation earlier and every slave had been successfully, 
prosperously and contentedly colonized in anotljer 
hemisphere? I suppose this Otis thinks Hosea 
Bigelow's Copperhead party the purest patriotism; 
but it only evinced that a time would come when 
the North and South would spring at each other's 
throats. We were then at war with a foreign power, 
and if Mexico could have read English in Yankee 
dialect, this Bigelow party would have given her 
comfort, if not aid. 

Josiah Quincy, a great statesman in his day, when 
a Senator in Congress from Massachusetts, declared 
that if Louisiana came in as a State of the Republic, 
it would be the duty of some, as it was the right 



90 

of all, to withdraw from the Union, and what he 
said went unchallenged. In those days the right 
of secession was conceded with practical unanimity. 



Why was it denied in 1860? Because the Amer- 
ican people had grown so great ; they were so pros- 
perous, so free, so contented under the Constitution 
and in the Union, that when secession — an undis- 
puted right at the beginning of the century — came in 
1861 millions sprang to arms to save the Union. 
That which was an acknowledged right was now 
only a disputed theory. Here was an irrepressible 
conflict that only the sword could determine. 

The American people were divided into two 
schools. One side, the overwhelming majority in 
number, the infinitely superior in wealth, held that if 
a State seceded she should be coerced to return to 
the Union. Grant was of this opinion. The other 
side, comparatively weak in numbers, and in a com- 
parative sense ridiculously poor in wealth, held that 
the citizen's alliance was due to his State, even in 
a quarrel with the Union. Lee was of this opinion. 

Grant and Lee followed their convictions. Both 
were right, both equally patriotic. Had either done 
other than he did, and at the same time participated 
in the conflict, he would have been the traitor. 



And he was a son of the old Dominion, her 
noblest, if not her most illustrous son — her grandest, 
if not her greatest, child. And what a matchless 
old Commonwealth it is! 

It is everywhere conceded that Virginia is the 
most illustrious of the American commonwealths. 
She contributed to civil liberty the tongue of Henry, 



91 

the pen of Jefferson, and the sword of Washington. 
Nay, she ilkimined the Christian civiHzation and 
exalted the human race with the lofty character of 
Robert E. Lee. The Constitution fell from the 
plastic hands of her Madison and her Mason, and to 
the Republic she gave Kentucky and the opulent 
empire called the "Middle West." Leader of the 
rebellion of 76, she was the citadel of the rebellion 
of '61, and in her generous bosom sleeps more 
buried valor than reposes in the soil of all the rest of 
our hemisphere besides. When the South was at bay 
against what was practically the world in arms and 
the Old Dominion was bleeding at every pore, the 
vulture tore her tortured vitals and the vandal carved 
from her side what is now West Virginia and made 
it an annex of Pennsylvania. 

And then, O ! Churl, in the prodigality of her 
transcendent munificence, she gave to the North in 
that mighty struggle, George H. Thomas, the great- 
est and most consummate soldier who wore the blue, 
the one blade worthy to clash with the blade of Lee. 

"Ah me, the vines that bear such fruit are proud to stoop 
with it !' 

Lee a traitor ! Then give us countless and peren- 
nial generations of them ! 



THE HOUSE OF STUART. 

Hear, Land o' Cakes, and brither Scots, 
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnnie Groat's. 

For the first time in more than three centuries a 
Catholic has just been elevated to the Supreme bench 



92 

of Scotland, and that, too, upon the nomination of 
a Protestant King of England. And the name of the 
new Justice is Campbell. Shade of MacCalum 
More! Shade of John Knox! 

And a prince of the House of Brunswick, the 
reigning dynasty of Great Britain, has been christen- 
ed Charles ! Shade of Cromwell ! Shade of Pym I 

There have been four Williams Kings of England, 
the first and the third very great men, and the second 
knew how to wear a crown according to the lights 
of his age. Of the eight Henrys, six were very 
strong men and ruled with imperious hand. The 
first, third and fourth Edwards were mighty war- 
riors and statesmen. The first Richard was Coeur 
de Leon, and the last was Richard III, perhaps the 
greatest crowned intellect, and certainly the greatest 
crowned scoundrel, in English history. John was in- 
tended for a great man, but turned miscreant. 

James I, the first Stuart, was a learned man, and 
the King of France, no mean judge, swore he was 
also a learned fool. James H was a yet greater fool 
and swapped the crown for a mass, thus reversing 
his grandfather, who said, "Paris is worth a mass." 
Charles I, the son of the first James and father of 
the second, might have been a successful King if he 
could have seen the strength there is in speaking the 
truth. Had he been a candid man and true to his 
word, Cromwell might have restored to him his 
crown. Charles II had more sense than his father, 
his grandfather and his brother combined. Other- 
wise he would have lost the throne with his prin- 
ciples. 



The first George was an imported King, taken 



93 

on trial, and a very good one, for he did what Wal- 
pole told him to do, and since the death of Anne that 
is all a King of England has been fit for — obey his 
prime minister. His great-grandson, George III, 
undertook to rule and made such a mess of it that 
he lost for the Crown what is now one of the most 
opulent and the most powerful nations in the world 
His son was nearly as thorough and complete a 
scamp as ever wore the English purple, though they 
said he was "the first gentleman of Europe." 

Of her four regnant Queens, three had glorious 
reigns — Elizabeth saved Europe from Spain, Anne 
saved Europe from France, Victoria brought again 
the golden age. 

There is much in a name, and the sanest of us 
have a streak of the superstitious. It is a rare Eng- 
lishman who would not be disturbed if a John, a 
James, or a Charles should ascend the throne. 



This incident of a Catholic put on the bench of 
Scotland makes the mind revert to Mary and her 
bastard brother Murray, to Montrose and his heroic 
kinsman, Claverhouse; to Prince Charlie and Flora 
McDonald, to Lord George Gordon's riots and the 
agitation they caused in Scotland. How has re- 
ligious zeal and the malignant fanaticism it spawned 
receded before the resistless tread of enlightened 
civilization! Only a while ago Charlie Russell, a 
Catholic Irishman, died Lord Chief Justice of Eng- 
land! 

The writer of this is no Catholic, nor does he 
belong to any Protestant church — he is just a simple 
Christian, for whom the blood shed on Calvary made 
all and ample atonement, and, therefore, he can dis- 



94 

cuss without bias the incident with which this paper 
opens. 

In the pohtical and religious strifes between 
Protestant and CathoHc in the British Isles, the 
former reaped substantial victory, while round the 
other side cling romance, devotion and glory, and 
the same is true of another cause counted as lost on 
this side of the world. Mary was the most beautiful 
of women and the most unfortunate of Queens. 
Had her brother been Catholic, or had he been 
legitimate, hers might have been a happy fate. In 
the one case, Murray's sword directed by his con- 
summate statecraft, would have saved her crown, 
and in the other, he would have been King of Scot- 
land, and she Queen-Dowager of France, a land 
she loved so passionately. 



But fate would not have it so. The niece of 
Francis of Guise, the first captain of Christendom, 
the head of the house of Lorrain, the defender of 
Metz, and the conquerer of Calais, Mary was mar- 
ried to a worthless King of France, and through her 
Guise governed that realm until the King's early 
death, when Mary was sent to Scotland, a weak 
woman, to govern the most ungovernable people of 
whom history gives account. Her entire reign was 
a series of unbroken mistakes, possibly attended with 
crimes, according to the canons of our age ; but if 
Mary was criminal, she was dealing with a lot of 
baser and cruder criminals, and as a general propo- 
sition the unbiased man is on her side. Imprisoned 
in Lochliven castle, her brother became regent, and 
upon her escape he overthrew her army, and she, 
fated to destruction, sought asylum in the kingdom 



95 

of her cousin, Elizabeth, who, after long- imprison- 
ment, cut off her head. 

Mary's son became King of England and Scot- 
land. He had been bred a Protestant, was a pedant 
and perhaps the most learned fool in history. It 
was in his reign that was produced the English 
translation of the Bible, an event that would have 
added distinction to any reign, and made it illustri- 
ous. In theory he believed in the divine absolute 
right of Kings to rule; but he was too timid to 
practice it. 



From the landing of Mary in Scotland to the 
battle of Culloden, a period of some eight-score 
years, fate loved to deal untold misfortune on the 
house of Stuart. Charles I was the most virtuous 
man who had sat on the English throne, and he 
had the affections of his people of both realms ; but 
he was indoctrinated with the idea of arbitrary 
power, and to attain it he adopted a course that was 
full of fatal mistakes. He allowed the Parliament 
to chop off the head of Strafford, who was capable 
of saving his crown. Instead of appointing Mont- 
rose commander of the army in England he sent 
him to the Highlands of Scotland, where he made a 
campaign that neither Hannibal nor Napoleon would 
have been ashamed of, but that was as fruitless as 
is was glorious. His father had sent two regiments 
to the continent to fight in the "Thirty Years' War'* 
on the Protestant side. Monk belonged to one of 
those regiments, and was the best tactician in Eng- 
land. Charles refused him important command. 
Cromwell captured him and his book on tactics, and 
adopted the thing, and that was what got him the 



96 

ultimate victory. His soldiers were known as "Ircn- 
sides," much due from the hint Cromwell got out of 
Monk's book. 

Chivalrous as were the King's armies they suc- 
cumbed to the prowess of the Parliament armies, led 
by Cromwell, the greatest Englishman of that or 
any other age, and Cromwell cut off Charles' head, 
just as Elizabeth had cut off his grandmother's. 



After the Cromwellian despotism ceased, upon 
the death of its creator, that same Monk restored 
the house of Stuart to the purple and put the crown 
on the head of Charles II, who might have been a 
very great man had he not preferred to be a 
very great scamp. His life had been one of 
hardship and of danger. He had seen human 
nature as fickle as the winds' lists and as false as 
dicers' oaths. He did not believe there was honor 
in man or chastity in woman. And so, instead of 
being a great statesman, he elected to be a great 
trifler. He was called the "merrie monarch," and 
his was the merriest court in Europe during his 
entire reign of more than twenty years. Instead 
of giving laws to the continent as Cromwell 
had done, he was content, to be pensioner of 
his cousin, Louis XIV, who was the virtual ruler 
of England as long as he could keep Charles amused, 
and that was not at all difficult when the purse was 
full, or the women handsome. 

James II, his brother and successor, was a very 
different order of man. Some wit said of the two, 
while Charles was yet living : "The King could see 
things if he would ; the Duke would see things if he 
could." James, too, loved pleasure, but he was 



97 

much fonder of statecraft, and took his job of states- 
man seriously. He was always projecting with af- 
fairs. Once he thought he had discovered a plot to 
assassinate the King and went to Charles with a 
long story about it, to which his brother replied: 
"Rest easy, James, nobody will kill me to make 
you King." 

No sooner was James on the throne than he began 
to meddle with things the English people would 
not allow to be tampered with. He was a brave man, 
as all his line, absolutely honest, and a stout soldier, 
well approved by the test of battle. He might have 
been a successful ruler had he been a Protestant; 
but he sought to re-establish the Catholic religion 
and lost his crown in the attempt 



William of Orange, James' son-in-law, now became 
King of England, and for three-score years there- 
after there was constant plot to restore the house of 
Stuart to its hereditary right. Claverhouse raised 
the Stuart standard in Scotland : 

Dundee, he is mounted; he rides up the street; 
The bells are rung backwards, the drums they are beat. 
But the Provost, douce man, cried, "E'en let them gae free, 
For the toun is well rid o'that de'll o' Dundee." 

Claverhouse soon fell on a stricken field, with the 
shouts of a glorious victory ringing in his ears. But 
it was all in vain. William was secure on the throne, 
and when he died, Anne, daughter of James, and a 
Protestant became Queen regent. 



All Anne's children died, and she and her favorite 
minister, Bollingbroke, desired that her half-brother, 
"The Pretender," should be her successor on the 



98 

throne, but here adverse fate again pursued that 
Stuart cause. Anne died suddenly, and the Whigs 
were too vigilant, and thus came in the house of 
Brunswick, its head also a lineal descendant of Mary 
of Scotland. But George I was very unpopular. He 
spoke not a word of English. He was German to 
the marrow, and thought a hundred times more of 
this electarate of Hanover than he did of the English 
throne. There was a rebellion in Scotland for the 
Stuart in 1715, but it was mismanaged, and old 
George himself was half sorry that it failed, for he 
would have gone back to the continent feeling well 
rid of his subjects in England, who were determined 
to govern themselves regardless of who wore the 
purple. There was not a day after he became the 
head of his family that the pretender would not have 
been made King if he had only become a communi- 
cant of the Church of England. 

In 1745 the Stuart made the last attempt to re- 
gain the English crown. The young pretender. 
Prince Charles, landed in Scotland, and the high- 
lands swelled his ranks with first-class fighting men. 

The standard on the braes o' Mar 

Is up and streaming rarily ! 
The gathering pipe on Lochnager 

Is sounding lang and clearly ! 
The Highland men from hill and glen, 

In martial hue, with bonnets blue, 
Wi' belted plaids and burnished blades 

Are coming late and early ! 

And victory came with them, repeated victory, in 
Scotland. England was invaded, and the King in 
London was ready to go back to Hanover; but the 
Duke of Cumberland met the invaders of Culloden, 
and there the cause of Stuart was forever lost. 



99 

But it lives immortal in history, in tradition, in 
poetry and in romance. "O'er the Water to Charlie" 
is yet sung in Scotland : 

I ance had sons, but now hae nane ; 

I bred them toiling sairly, 
And I would bear them a" again 

And lose them a' for Charlie. 

Ever since Culloden, now nearly nine-score years, 
the house of Brunswick has been more secure on the 
English throne than any other dynasty in English 
history, and yet more English tears have been shed 
over the misfortunes of the Stuart line than England 
ever gave plaudits to the Hanoverian succession. 

But the Stuart cause, though lost in a material 
sense, will live forever, in the imaginations and in 
the sentiments of men the world round. 

And a Catholic, a Campbell, is on the Supreme 
bench of Scotland ! 



CLEMENT LAIRD VALLANDIGHAM. 

This was a man. We find his like in Plutarch. 
Thomas Carlyle would have delighted in him and 
made a hero of him. For the right, as he saw the 
right, he would have been one of the glorious cara- 
van of martyrs. The Regent Murray, the unfor- 
tunate Mary's brother, with the bar-sinister, said of 
the dead John Knox: "Here lies a man who never 
feared to look on the face of man." That, too, was 
Clement Laird Vallandigham. He was Huguenot 
and Scotch-Irish, of the blood that defended Ro- 
chelle, mingled with the blood that defended Lon- 
donderry. It followed the white plume of Henry of 
Navarre, and withstood the impetuous courage of 



100 

Graham of Claverhouse. The first Vallandigham to 
cross the waters settled in Virginia on the Potomac, 
not far from Mount Vernon, the last decade of the 
seventeenth century, and it was a descendant of his, a 
a Presbyterian clergyman, who married Rebecca 
Laird, of York county, Pa., and to them was born, 
July 29, 1820, at New Lisbon, Columbiana county, 
Ohio, a son, Clement L. Vallandigham. 

The boy was father of the man — open, resolute, 
diligent, studious, manly. He was prepared for col- 
lege by his father, and when seventeen years of age 
he entered Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pa. Al- 
ways methodical, in college he followed certain 
rules for the regulation of his moral conduct, and 
one of them was this : "Cultivate decision of char- 
acter, moral courage, independence." Here another : 
"Be honest, be generous, be open-hearted, be polite, 
be a good neighbor." One more: "Have an object 
in view. Aim high." And here is yet another that 
every youth should have stamped on his mind and 
branded on his conscience : "Character is power, is 
influence." It is a curious coincidence that he left 
college in his senior year because of a heated dis- 
cussion he had with the president of the institution 
on the subject of "State's Rights." He returned 
to his home in Ohio, and entered the law office 
of his elder brother as a student, a slender, hawk- 
nosed, eagle-eyed, handsome, engaging young gen- 
tleman. Years afterward the president of Jefferson 
College, with whom he had engaged in discussion, 
wrote him a letter of explanation and apology, and 
offered him a diploma on the sole condition that Mr. 
Vallandigham would apply to the faculty for it, but 
he would not. 



101 

Young Vallandigham began the study of politics 
at the age of sixteen, and he brought to the task a 
superior intellect and a hunger for the right. But he 
brought more ; he was both honest and brave in the 
three great estates — mental, moral, physical. He 
might have been wrong, but if he was it was a mis- 
fortune not a fault. He was no time-server. When 
he was twenty-three he wrote certain rules to guide 
his conduct as a statesman, and here is one of them : 
"Always to pursue what is honest, right and just, 
though adverse to the apparent and present interests 
of the country, well assured that what is not right 
cannot in the long run be expedient." Again: "In 
all things coolly to ascertain and wtih stern inde- 
penednce to pursue the dictates of my judgment and 
my conscience, regardless of the consequences to 
party or self." These be brave and noble words. If 
every public man lived up to them the problems of 
government would be about solved. The country 
would be safe in the control of either political party; 
laws would be equal for high and low, and justice the 
same for strong and weak. Privilege would slink 
away and hide its hideous head and truth would 
have a fair field and a fair fight against error, and 
there would be hope that a time might come when 
the state should be purged of corruption and in- 
competence. 

In 1845 Mr. Vallandigham was elected to the 
State legislature. He had just attained to the con- 
stitutional age and was the youngest member of 
the body. Again he formulated certain rules for the 
regulation of his conduct as a representative, and 
here is one that it is pre-eminently fit to quote : "To 
speak but rarely, and never without having made 



102 

myself complete and thorough master of the subject. 
* * * No error is more fatal to influence in a 
deliberative assembly than the violation of this plain 
truth. 'Verily ye are not heard for your much speak- 
ing.' " When one contemplates the vast mass of 
verbiage that is in the enormous volumes of the 
Congressional Record for a single short, session of 
Congress he can appreciate the wisdom of that rule 
laid down by this extraordinary young man. During 
his service in the legislature, he made a speech in 
which he drew the character, as he conceived it, of 
the true statesman. It is a splendid passage, truly 
eloquent and breathing in every word a lofty and 
patriotic sentiment. The man's ideals were simply 
sublime. 



Again he was elected to the legislature, though he 
had voted to restore salaries to a higher grade, al- 
ways an unpopular thing to do. It was during the 
Mexican war, and he supported the war in an ex- 
ceptionally able speech, which was not very well 
received in the Whig legislature. True to his prin- 
ciples, he moved to lay on the table certain resolu- 
tions indorsing the "Wilmot proviso." In his speech 
against that measure he predicted that the agitation 
of that very question would inevitably lead to civil 
war, and it was a prophecy. He declared that he 
was a Union man and unalterably opposed to its 
dissolution, and that same session he voted to reject 
two Whig petitions to the legislature to declare the 
Union dissolved and wihdraw the Ohio Senators 
and representatives in Congress because Texas was 
admitted as a slave State. 

Vallandigham now took up his residence at Day- 



103 

ton, opened a law office, and became the editor of the 
Empire newspaper, which he made a powerful organ 
of the Democratic party. In 1852 he was nominated 
for Congress in the historic Third district — Mont- 
gomery, Butler and Preble — but was defeated by 
Lewis D. Campbell, one of the strongest men Ohio 
ever produced. Two years later he was again de- 
feated by Mr. Campbell. In 1856 the same two were 
again opposing candidates for Congress, and again 
Mr. Campbell was awarded the certificate of elec- 
tion, but Vallandigham contested the seat and it 
was given him, and thus it was that this strong, in- 
tense, able, brilliant man took his place in the national 
councils May 25, 1858. It is well enough at this 
place to glance at the State of Ohio from a political 
standpoint. 

Ohio is composed of many elements, now thor- 
oughly homogeneous. It was settled by the Puritan, 
the Cavalier, the Quaker, the Scotch-Irish, the Penn- 
sylvania Dutch, and to them came many Germans 
and Irish. The Western Reserve was territory ac- 
quired by Connecticut, and it was peopled by families 
from New England, a hardy race, who builded a 
powerful and prosperous State in that region. In 
that part of Ohio the Democratic party never got 
a lodgment. Thence came Giddings and Wade 
and Garfield and McKinley. The rich basin of the 
Ohio, where the Muskingum, the Scioto and the 
Miarni water valleys as fertile as Goshen, was settled 
principally by Virginia and Maryland — soldiers of 
Washington who were given these lands because 
their country had no money to give them. They 
were divided in political sentiment, and many of 



104 

them adhered to the preachments of Hamilton rather 
than to the doctrines of Jefferson. 

The "Backbone" was settled by the Pennsylvania 
Dutch, and they possessed a great area and multi- 
plied prolifically, and they and their sons and daugh- 
ters were Democarts. The Germans were mostly in 
cities and towns. They were of several tribes. 
Those of them who held to the Catholic Church were 
Democrats, while the Lutherans were Republicans. 
The Free Thinkers among them were also Republi- 
cans. The Irish may be classed among the Demo- 
crats. The clergy were, for a great many years, a 
powerful factor in Ohio politics — the Protestant 
clergy. As a class they hated the Catholic Church 
and the Democratic party. They persisted in dab- 
bling in things that belonged to Caesar, and repudi- 
ated what was owing to Caesar. Frank Hurd said 
he visited every Protestant church in Toledo, devot- 
ing a Sunday to each, and every occasion was 9 
Republican campaign rally and every sermon a 
Republican stump speech. That was during the 
war of 1861-65. In 1857 thirty-two young women 
of Republican families, dressed in the habiliments of 
woe, paraded the streets of Columbus, following a 
cofjfin that they supposed was "Bleeding Kansas." 
Possibly at that very moment Jim Lane was con- 
templating murder, and John Brown was doing mur- 
der, in that same Kansas. Those were strenuous 
times, and while Pope Angelica is not yet come to 
whip simony from the church, most of the politics 
has been banished from the pulpit in the great and 
commanding State of Ohio, that has furnished more 
brains to the Republican party than any other State, 
and at the same time has contributed more than her 



105 

full share of brains to the Democratic party. Not 
the least of the ills with which this country is afflicted 
— and has been afflicted for forty years — is the lack 
of homogeneity of the Ohio Democracy. There 
were Frank Hurd and George Converse, no more 
in accord on the tariff question than the tune of 
Greensleeves and the one-hundredth psalm. There 
were John A. McMahn and A. J. Warner, as far 
apart on the money question as the East is from the 
West. It is not too much to say that Clement L. 
Vallandigham was the greatest man, if not the most 
powerful mind, the Ohio Democarcy has produced. 



In Congress Vallandigham got in the front rank 
at a single bound. He was an orator and a debater, 
and he believed something. That's the stuff — he 
believed. He might have been wrong — his principles 
might have taken hold on damnation ; but he was like 
the Luther that was bent on going to Worms. He 
supported Douglas in 1860, but he was not in full 
accord with that great leader and never hesitated to 
disagree with him. He was thrice returned to Con- 
gress, and did all that man could do to avert the war 
between the States. He might have done as John 
A. Logan and Daniel E. Sickles did; but he was 
made of sterner stuff. 

There was no man of that epoch more devoted to 
the Union than Clement L. Vallandigham, but it 
was the Union of the Constitution that he loved. It 
is not done in way of criticism, but stating the plain 
truth, to say that in 1863 he Republican party pre- 
ferred disunion to the LTnion with slavery at the 
South. That was Vallandigham's objection to Lin- 
coln's administration. He was willing for the South 



106 

to be whipped back into the Union, but he wanted 
it done in a constitutional way. His great mistake 
was that he did not reahze that war legislates. The 
army had a task to do. If the Constitution was in 
the way of that work, so much the worse for the 
Constitution. If the citizen went about muttering 
about habeas corpus and the bill of rights, so much 
the worse for the citizen — he was sent to Fort War- 
ren. The country was in a convulsion and recog- 
nized no law but that of self-preservation. 



Gen. A. E. Burnside was a stout soldier and a 
poor commander. He had rude courage and crude 
generalship. It is related that when he was whipped 
at Fredericksburg, Stonewall Jackson proposed to 
Gen Lee that he be permitted to take the offensive, 
strip his soldiers to the waist that comrade might 
recognize comrade, and make a night attack on the 
demoralized Federal army. Lee refused, with the 
remark that he knew Burnside and that he was sure 
Burnside would make another charge. Jackson an- 
swered that there was no charge left in that army. 
Both were right. Burnside did order another 
charge, but the army refused to be murdered. As 
great a failure as McDowell, and among all Federal 
commanders second only to John Pope in the failure 
line, Burnside was sent to the Department of the 
Ohio to catch deserters and overawe copperheads. 
He issued order No. 38, threatening penalties 
against "implied" treason. He forbade citizens to 
keep and bear arms and suspended the right of free 
speech. These were aimed at Vallandigham more 
than any other individual. The Cincinnati Enquirer 
was another selected victim of this tyranny. Burn- 



107 

side was used as the French soldier Augereau was 
used by Napoleon when the directory was over- 
thrown and the consulate established in its stead. 
Of course, Vallandigham was bound to denounce 
such a business as that Burnside was engaged in, 
and, of course, he was arrested. He was tried by a 
military commission and ordered to be imprisoned 
the remainder of the war. The Ohio Democracy 
was enraged and became violent. They sacked the 
office of the Dayton Journal, and if they had been 
armed, the seat of war would have been transferred 
to Ohio. Mr. Lincoln commuted Vallandigham's 
sentence to banishment, and he was sent to Gen. 
Rosecrans to be turned over to the Confederate 
general, Bragg. After a time he left the South and 
made his way to Canada. 

While he was yet in exile the Democrats of Ohio 
nominated him for governor. The Republicans 
nominated a war Democrat, John Brough. The 
campaign was intensely exciting, and Vallandigham 
was disastriously defeated by 100,000 majority and 
upward. There is little doubt that there was a 
majority against him, but it is absurd to say it was 
that great, or even the half of it. The administration 
at Washington was not ready to surrender the Un- 
ion. The inauguration of Vallandigham as governor 
of Ohio in 1863 would have been as great a calam- 
ity to the administration as a complete Confederate 
victory at Gettysburg. The militai-y defeat could 
have been compensated by a subsequent military 
victory, but such a political defeat as the election of 
Vallandigham would have been fatal. It would 
have left but one thing for Lincoln to do, to with- 
draw his armies from the field and disband them. 



108 

And so we can easily believe that the Republican 
majority in Ohio in 1863 was enormously padded. 
In those days the Republican party did not bother 
itself with an oversupply of conscience or integrity. 



Vallandigham got back to Ohio the day the State 
convention was held at Hamilton to send delegates 
to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago. 
He made a speech to the convention that meant 
business. Mr. Lincoln consulted with a prominent 
Ohio Republican as to the advisability of arresting 
him, and was told that it would necessitate the 
withdrawal of the army from before Richmond and 
employing it as a posse comitatus to make the arrest. 
And so Vallandigham was left alone and permitted 
to canvass for the Democratic national ticket. By 
this time the South was exhausted and the war was 
practically over. 

In 1867 the Democrats nominated Allen G. Thur- 
man for governor of Ohio, and his Republican com- 
petitor was Rutherford B. Hayes. It was Vallan- 
digham's fight. He had his eye on Ben Wade's 
seat in the United States Senate, and he managed 
the campaign. Sometimes politics — and especially 
Ohio politics — cuts some strange capers and shines. 
Since the creation of the Republican party, Ohio had 
never gone Democratic. True, George E. Pugh 
was a Senator from 1855 to 1861, but the legislature 
that chose him was elected in 1853. Ohio had been 
a Whig State in Presidential years, and the Republi- 
can party had been greatly re-enforced by a large 
body of war Democrats. Nobody dreamed that 
anything extraordinary was going to happen in a 
political way in Ohio in 1867, but something extra- 
ordinary and very extraordinary, did happen. The 



109 

first news was that Thiirman was elected, and for 
many years it was the duty of every good Ohio 
Democrat to beheve as well as to claim that he was 
elected. If there was a doubt about the race for 
governor, there was no doubt about the political 
complexion of the legislature — it was Democratic, 
the first Democratic legislature for many years. 

Vallandigham had earned the Senatorship, but the 
politicians were against him. He went to Columbus 
thoroughly angered and made some plain talk. It 
was on that occasion that he was reported as turning 
on John G. Thompson, and exclaiming : "D — n you, 
I'll put a knife in your vitals !" and a time came 
when he drove that gentleman from the chairmanship 
of the State committee. Thurman had made a splen- 
did race and his popularity was great. No one ever 
blamed him for accepting the Senatorship. He was 
in that body twelve years, and probably it is not 
too much to say that he made more reputation in the 
Senate than any other man Ohio ever sent to that 
body, not even excepting John Sherman, who was 
there nearly three times as long. But the Demo- 
cratic party of those days needed a leader in the 
Senate — needed a Vallandigham there. 



The double decade immediately succeeding the 
war developed four strong leaders of the Democratic 
party — Samuel J. Tilden, Samuel J. Randall, Wil- 
liam R. Morrison and Clement L. Vallandigham. 
Tilden was the greatest of these, but he had no 
health, though he was elected President. Randall 
would have been- President had he lived in New 
York and been sane on the tariff. Morrison would 
have been President had he been nominated. Per- 
haps Vallandigham would have been President had 



110 

he lived ten years longer. He was not only a virile 
and splendid leader but he was a big-minded man. 
He very nearly nominated Chase in 1868, and had 
he succeeded, it might have been the death of the 
Republican party — certain it would have been the 
death of radical Republicanism. The Dantons and 
the Marats would have been replaced by Vergniaud 
and Dumouriez. The South would not have quaffed 
such a bitter cup. And when Vallandigham died he 
was the life of a "new departure," big with promise 
and with history. 

He died in his prime, when little over fifty. His 
death was a shock to the whole country. The Re- 
publicans had come to respect him and to admire 
him. They had ceased to hate him, and yet con- 
tinued to fear him. The Democrats were beginning 
to see in him a captain. He did not live to see 
William Allen come from retirement to lead the 
Ohio Democracy to victory. He did not see the 
resistless Democratic tidal wave of 1874. He did, 
not live to see the rape of the Presidency in 1876-77. 
Had he lived he would have been in the full maturity 
of his powers when Cleveland was inaugurated in 
1885. Had he lived he might have been the man 
from Ohio who came to the Presidency in 1881. 
Could the energies and accomplishments of James A. 
Garfield and Clement L. Vallandigham have been 
fused in a single personality, what a mighty man he 
would have been! 



BENJAMIN R. TILLMAN, 

There are the rich and the poor. Now, as ever, 
they are the problem of politics and statecraft. vSince 
the time of Abraham it has been the custom of the 



Ill 

rich to own much property, and since before the 
time of Lazarus the poor have possessed httle of this 
world's goods. That always was, and it ever will be, 
so long as meum et tuum plays a part in the affairs 
of men. It is easy to make the poor dissatisfied with 
their lot; envy is a noxious plant. In all the ages 
demagogues have been active in arraying class 
against class, the poor against the rich. The Rome 
that withstood Pyrrhus, conquered Hannibal and 
sent her victorious legions to the Euphrates was 
alternately ruled by patrician oligarchy and plebeian 
mob. Sooner or later a Caesar was inevitable. But 
we order things better. Ours is a government of all 
the people, by the people, and for the people. We 
have no room for Caesars, though our demagogues 
are legion. 

It was the memorable and pregnant year 1896 — 
the closing days of the month of January. The peo- 
ple were in a state of discontent. Agitators were 
abroad in the land. Dr. Sangrado's practice was 
large. Dr. Fakir was everywhere. The mart was 
empty, the bay shipless. Only the strong arm and 
the stronger will of a strong man had crushed riot 
and anarchy at a great industrial and commercial 
center. Labor was idle; capital was in a panic. 
Coxey had marched a horde of vagrants to the Capi- 
tal of the country and what was a farce might have 
been a tragedy. Revolution would have come in any 
other land dominated by Saxon blood and not sub- 
ject to Saxon ideas and Saxon polity. 

The Senate of. the United States v/as sitting. A 
member new to that council chamber was to be 
heard. He was not unheralded. We are told that 
the party that persecuted Savonarola was happy in 



112 

the dream that a Pope was to come who would 
reform all things and utterly extirpate simony in 
the church. He did not come ; he has not come. And 
now we were told that a Senator was to appear in 
the American Congress who would wipe error and 
corruption off the face of the earth, uproot political 
simony and plant virtue in all our hearts, wisdom 
in all our minds, content in all our consciences, mel- 
ody in all our throats, and money — such as is it 
was — in all our purses. Nobody seemed to know 
exactly how all these great blessings were to be ac- 
complished, and there was some degree of curiosity 
as to the ways and means, and no little skepticism as 
to the results. 



Many years ago, down in Barren county, Ky., 
there lived John Lambrith, a fine old character, ad- 
mirable in many particulars, despite his inveterate 
disposition to litigate his rights in courts of justice : 
One day when he had been defeated in a lawsuit 
involving something less than $10, he called to his 
adversary in the court room : 

"Come out doors, Motley ; I want to tell you how 
mean you are." 

And that was the method our Pope Angelica, 
from South Carolina pursued in his grand perform- 
ance of reform and disinfecticn when he delivered 
his maiden speech in the Senate of the United States, 
January 29, 1896. He told his colleagues how mean 
they were. He rebuked them for not applauding 
Senatorial eloquence themselves and for forbidding 
the galleries to applaud it. He declared that the 
government was in the hands of plutocrats — that 
the Secretary of the Treasury was a Judas, the 
President the enemy of mankind, or words of that 



113 

import. He reproached himself for permitting the 
people of South Carolina to cast the electoral vote 
of that State for Grover Cleveland in 1892. The 
speech was a long, rambling harangue and the text 
of it might have been the words of Sir Peter Teazle : 
''We live in a damned wicked world, Sir Oliver, and 
the fewer we praise the better." He introduced the 
pitchfork as an implement of statecraft, and of 
Senatorial deliberation, and about all that could be 
made of the performance was that there was a 
man in the Senate whose probity would have suf- 
ficed to save Sodom had he been there; that that 
man was tall, muscular, athletic, one-eyed; that he 
was from South Carolina, and his name Ben Till- 
man. 



The Senate had heard much of this man. He had 
been discussed from ocean to ocean. He had led 
a successful revolution in his own State. He was 
no ordinary man. He only lacked genius to be a 
very great man. He was a man of marked and 
pronounced individuality. Perhaps not Ben Tappan, 
nor Thad Stevens, had been so frank, so blunt, so 
abrupt, so brusque, as he. Perhaps Ben Butler 
had been no more cordially hated by his enemies 
than he. In the Continental Congress Bee, Butler, 
Gadsden, Izard, Laurens, Motte, Pinckney and 
Rutledge had come from South Carolina. In later 
Senates the Butlers, Gailard, Hayne, Calhoun, Pres- 
ton, McDuffie, Hammond, Chestnut, Hampton and 
others had made illustrious the State of South Caro- 
lina. For above' a century these men, and such as 
they, ruled that State. It was not exactly an olig- 
chy; that is too harsh a term — it was a patriarchal 
system rather. It was an honest, cheap, pure govern- 



114 

ment, without corruption and without scandal. In- 
telHgence guided the council, and the councilors were 
too proud to stoop to a meanness. It was this sys- 
tem, common to nearly all the slave States, that led 
Thomas Carlyle to give his sympathy to the South 
in the great struggle of 1861-65. No other age, no 
other clime, ever saw such a system, and the world 
shall not look upon its like again. 

Tillman overthrew the establishment of more 
than two hundred years. Blue blood was deposed. 
The masses — the white masses — were made to see 
and feel their power. Perhaps it was only the in- 
evitable sequence of Appomattox. The day of the 
"cracker" was come, and though Tillman was neith- 
er Mirabeau nor Danton, he led a revolution as com- 
plete, with results far more stable than theirs. The 
speech that Tillman delivered in the Senate on the 
resolutions commemorative of the life and character 
of his dead colleague, John Laurens Manning Irby, 
is a remarkable production, and will profit every 
reader. It is the history of the bloodless revolution 
of South Carolina. It relates how it came to be 
that old things passed away and all things were 
become new. It is folly to deny the man some 
extraordinary qualities. 



That January day. 1896, Tillman rose from his 
seat, in the extreme rear row, and with heavy tread 
marched down to the desk in the first row lately 
occupied by his predecessor — and it was no coinci- 
dence — and it was from that position that he hurled 
his agrarian threatenings, thence he wielded his 
pitchfork. There was a large attendance on floor 
and in galleries. Always dignified, the Senate was 
now solemn. One could but be reminded of the 



115 

scene in another Senate thousands of years before, 
when Marcus Papirus struck dead the profane Gaul 
who plucked his beard. And it recalled another 
event recorded in more modern history — Martin 
Schenck at Nymwegen : 

"On the evening of August lo, 1569, there was a wed- 
ding feast in one of the splendid mansions of the stately 
city. The festivities were prolonged until deep in the mid- 
summer's night, and harp and viol were still inspiring the 
feet of the dancers, when on a sudden, in the midst of 
the holiday groups appeared the grim visage of Martin 
Schenck, the man who never smiled. Clad in no wedding 
garment, but in armour of proof, with morion on head and 
sword in hand, the great freebooter strode through the ball- 
room. 

Readers of Thucydides might have reverted to 
the picture of Cleon, the Athenian demagogue : 

"We see plainly the efifort to keep up a reputation as 
the straightforward, energetic counsellor; the attempt by 
rude bullying to hide from the people his slavery to them; 
the unscrupulous use of calumny to excite prejudice against all 
rival advisers." 

Cleon also boasted that he was the "unhired ad- 
vocate of the poor, and their protector and enricher 
by his judicial attacks on the rich." 

Of his manner it is written that Cleon first broke 
through his gravity and seemliness of the Athenian 
assembly by a loud and violent tone and coarse 
gesticulation, tearing open his dress, slapping his 
thigh and running about while speaking. 

Who would rather be Cleon than Nicias? Who 
would rather be Tillman than Cleveland ? 

Again, it might have been reflected that the poet 
Longfellow, somewhere in his writings, hazards the 
thought that the' devil would not be if God did not 
have some beneficient purpose to subserve by means 
of him. 



116 

Perhaps there were those who thought of Hume 
Campbell and his pitchfork speech in the English 
Commons a century and a half before. It, too, was 
coarse invective, but there was one there to challenge 
him and to answer him — one of whom, a man who 
loved him not, wrote : 

Three orators in distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; 
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd, 
The next in language, but in both the last; 
The power of nature could no farther go; 
To make the third she joined the other two. 

Pity it is there was none in the Senate to chal- 
lenge Tillman and answer him as Pitt challenged 
ancl answered Campbell. The most dignified of 
American Senators came from South Carolina. He 
was an ideal statesman, an ideal man. In him was 
Roman grandeur and Spartan virtue, the one more 
admirable presiding officer than Aaron Burr or John 
C. Breckinridge. He looked and acted and spoke 
and was the Senator, the statesman, the sage. His 
vision was clearer than Webster's if his horizon was 
more circumscribed. And he was not the least of 
that matchless trio of whom Clay and Webster were 
the other two. We cannot imagine what Lowndes 
would have become if he was, as claimed for him, a 
greater Calhoun. 



Tillman is the least dignified of Senators, the 
least conventional, a small edition of O'Connell, an 
illiterate Ingalls, a more virile and less fluent Bryan, 
a more audacious and more zealous Blackburn. A 
demagogue ? Certainly. But possibly he believes it, 
all of it, and more, too. If the man had the genius 
and the eloquence of Mirabeau he would be more 



117 

than Richelieu or Bismarck. Could either of these 
have made the proudest of Commonwealths, "The 
Cock of the South," a rumseller? 

Elijah Hise, one of the giants of a former genera- 
tion, used to employ expletives to emphasize an 
argument. Tillman sometimes laughs, but it is 
laughter without mirth. It startles, it grates, and is 
as different from the laughter of John M. Harlan as 
merriment is from menace. There was one of the 
greatest of popular orators lost to the people when 
Harlan went on the bench. 

In a speech not a great while ago, and a very- 
good speech it was, Tillman t<j\d how as a child he 
stood beside his mother's knee and heard from her 
lips the story of Seventy-six and the glorious part 
South Carolina played in that magnificent tragedy. 
It is an old, old story, that of "Seventy-six," and has 
been told again and again at ten times ten thousand 
firesides in this heaven-favored land, and that old 
story did much to make the men who wore the blue 
and the gray. That Roman matron of whom hei 
heroic son said, "Hadst thou been wife to Hercules 
six of his labors thou wouldst have done and saved 
thy husband so much sweat," had, and let us believe 
has, her prototype in millions of American homes. 
Every man must think better of Tillman for that 
glimpse of his childhood. 



Somebody accounted for the genius of Napoleon 
because his swaddling robe was tapestry, in which 
were woven figures depicting scenes from the Siege 
of Troy. Tom Marshall had another theory. One 
night he interpolated this sentence into that wonder- 
ful lecture on the tremendous Corsican : 



118 

"I make no doubt that if the exact facts could be 
ascertained it would be found that Napoleon Bona- 
parte was the direct lineal descendant of Julius 
Caesar." 

There is a better theory than either. No doubt 
Madame Mere told her son in his childhood the 
story and the glory of Belisarius. Be that as it may 
we can easily imagine that the child Tillman thirsted 
for the knowledge that is stored in the tradition 
of the men who founded the American republic 
and were the fathers of the greatest of the republics. 



HINTON ROWAN HELPLER. 

It was some ten years or more ago, on a sultry 
summer afternoon, when Congress was not in ses- 
sion, I happened to walk into the reading room of 
one of the leading hotels of Washington, fronting 
to the north, with several windows all open to the air 
outside. There were some nine or ten persons 
lounging in the place, and over in the corner were, 
some four or five old gentlemen in rather animated 
converse, the leader a man of striking personality. 
Now and again he would rise from his chair to make 
more emphatic a gesture, and I discovered a very 
athletic man, above six feet in height, straight as 
an arrow, and broad-shouldered as a giant, and long- 
armed as Rob Roy MacGreggor. His face wore 
the florid of an Englishman, his eyes were sky-blue, 
and his hair was white as cotton, but a vigorous, 
ivory white. His beard was the same. 

He would have been a distinguished presence in 
any company, though his physique was suggestive 



119 

of the coarse. He was not a fine-grained man like 
John C. Breckinridge, or Roscoe Conkling, and yet 
he was symmetrical. His features were large and 
heavy, but there was an expression of unmistakable 
resolution written all over his countenance, and an 
air of manifest sincerity in his every utterance. 
Everyone paid the closest attention to what he said, 
and all accorded him something very nearly like 
deference. 



His theme was that humanity was going to the 
dogs, and the main cause of it was novel-reading. 
He contended that it was a crime for a teacher to 
depart from fact in the instruction of youth or for 
anyone to deal in fancy in discourse, written or 
spoken, with his fellowman. As he dilated on this 
line, I mentally quoted : 

"What is truth? 
'Twas Pilate's question put to Truth itself, 
That deigned him to reply." 

I then reflected this way : Charles Dickens heard 
this man talk that somewhere, and the fertile genius 
of the author of Martin Chuzzlewit immortalized 
him in the Gradgrind of "Hard Times." I am yet 
confident that I am right in that impression. 

After some half an hour a friend came in, and I 
eagerly asked him who that remarkable person was. 
He answered, "That is Hinton Rowan Helpler." 

Soon thereafter the party broke up; but I was 
determined to have a talk v/ith Mr. Helper the 
first opportunity, and I had not long to wait. Within 
a week I found him in that same reading room, and 
I fell in conversation with him. Within a dozen 



120 

sentences I brought him to discourse on his philoso- 
phy of fact, and he traveled the same road he had 
trod the first time I saw him. I asked him if he 
had ever met Charles Dickens and he answered that 
he had not. I asked him if he had ever read Dickens' 
novels, and with an accent of impatience he thanked 
God he had never read a novel in his life. I then 
spoke of "Hard Times" and said that Dickens made 
one of the characters of that novel preach the pre- 
cise philosophy as to facts that he had just uttered. 
He looked very much surprised, and, I thought I de- 
tected that he was rather pleased ; but he would not 
promise to read the book. 

Dickens had the genius of Scott in that he could 
get a hint from a trivial circumstance and turn it 
into a masterpiece of fiction, and I am satisfied that 
he saw and heard Helper when on his visit over here 
and overheard him deliver the sentiments he makes 
Gradgrind profess in "Hard Times." Helper did 
not get them from Gradgrind, therefore Gradgrind 
must have appropriated them from Helpler. 



More than fifty years ago, Hinton Rowan Helper 
was the most talked-of man in the United States, all 
because John Sherman indorsed "The Impending 
Crisis," a book Helper had written advising the 
South to emancipate the slaves. Born a citizen of 
North Carolina, of English parents, Helper was not 
opposed to slavery from any transcendental or altru- 
istic consideration. If he had not believed the South 
would be infinitely more prosperous without slavery 
than with it, he would never have advocated emanci- 
pation. There was nothing of the sentimental in his 
make-up. "Facts, facts, give me facts!" was his 
motto. He looked on Garrison, Phillips, Beecher 



121 

and that set as a lot of fanatic lunatics. He regard- 
ed John Brown as a midnight assassin, who sought 
to put the knife to every white throat and the 
torch to every white roof of the South. For these 
folks he had nothing but contempt, scorn, hatred. 

Helper was a plain blunt man, who sought the 
emancipation and the deportation of the negro from 
our country. He was a'^man of superior intellect 
who clearly saw that unless the negro was freed, 
by the advent of the twentieth century, the cot- 
ton states east of the Mississippi river would be 
populated by twenty negroes to one white, and that 
would mean Hayti for those states, whether slavery 
survived or perished. It was to avoid that, to pre- 
serve Anglo-Saxon civilization, that Helper ap- 
pealed to the South to, abandon slavery. Had his 
advice been taken there would be no "race problem" 
in our country today, for there would be no negroes 
to make it. 

If the Garrisons, the Phillipses, the Beechers, the 
Summers and things had not intermeddled, by 1880, 
every border state would have been rid of slavery; 
but they would not emancipate on compulsion. North 
Carolina and Tennessee would have followed within 
a decade, and thus the thing might have died a 
natural death. 

Lincoln's idea of slaverv was precisely the Helper 
idea. He was for emancipation for the benefit of the 
whites of the South. Had the negro only been con- 
cerned, he would not have permitted the fire of 
a gun. 



The Thirty-sixth Congress has never been sur- 
passed for parliamentary ability in our country. The 



122 

Republicans had a plurality, that was little short of 
a majority, in the House of Representatives, and the 
old Whigs and Know-Nothings of the North, and 
the old Whigs and Know-Nothings of the South, 
who were opposed to the Democratic party, held the 
balance of power. The House was not organized 
till after the Christmas holidays, but on many of 
the ballots John Sherman, the Republican caucus 
nominee, was very nearly elected, and it was all 
fixed to elect him by Whig and Know-Nothing 
votes from the South, five of them from Kentucky, 
when one morning the papers came out with a list 
of the Republican signers of "The Helper Book," 
and John Sherman's name was one of them. 

Every Southern Whig or Know-Nothing knew it 
was political suicide to vote for Sherman after that 
expose, and his case then became hopless. The 
John Brown raid had occurred the October previous, 
and Sherman made a speech bitterly denunciatory 
of Brown, as did nearly every other Republican in 
both Houses. What would happen in the Sixty-sec- 
ond Congress if Owsley Stanley, or Henry Clayton, 
or Bob Henry were to memorize a speech of any 
one of a score of Republicans in the Thirty-sixth 
Congress on John Brown, and deliver it on the floor ? 
He would be hissed on the Republican side and the 
eloquence expunged from the record. 



Sherman explained that he had signed the "Helper 
Book" without knowing its contents. When I cited 
that to the old fellow, who has just passed away, 
it made him furious. He declared that Sherman 
had read every word of it, heartily approved it, and 
that he recanted in the vain hope to get the speaker- 



123 

ship. You could always get Helper into a passion 
by a mention of John Sherman's name. 

The last years of Hinton Rowan Helper's life 
were spent chasing a rainbow — a railroad from 
Behring Sea to Cape Horn. It may be accomplished 
some day, but it will never transport on a single 
train a ton of through freight. Thousands of miles 
of the road are now built and are parts of different 
systems. But the old man was infatuated with the 
idea, spent all he had in the promotion of it, and 
then surrendered to it a mind once powerful in its 
reasoning faculties. Next to the last time I saw 
him he argued with me to put $2,500 in it, and he 
would insure me $50,000 in five years. I told him 
all right— that if he could find $2,500, my property, 
just to put her in and send me the certificate of stock. 

Only the day before his death — or rather the 
day of his death, for he died that night — I walked a 
few steps behind him a full block of Pennsylvania 
Avenue, and I could discover no loss of vigor in his 
tread or any less erectness of that stalwart frame. 

But the world had wrestled with him and thrown 
him. His mind was shattered and his heart was 
broken. Friendless, penniless and alone, he took his 
own life and died at the age of 80— this man who 
had shaken the republic from center to circumfer- 
ence, and who at a critical period had held and filled 
the center of the stage. A day or two after he was 
buried somebody proposed a monument to him. 
Fifty dollars in his purse the day he died might have 
saved his life. 



124 



CARL SCHURZ. 



Perhaps there is no intelligent American who does 
not give first place to Alexander Hamilton among 
our foreign-born citizens, and perhaps 90 per cent of 
intelligent folk would accord Carl Schurz second 
place. Though German-born and German-learned, 
Mr. Schurz stood among the elite of the front rank 
of American citizenship and American statesman- 
ship. As a publicist he was perhaps the first of 
Americans when he died. He was a gigantic intellect, 
and an exalted character. Not John Knox, nor 
Sam Adams, was more courageous of conviction, or 
less disposed to compromise with what he thought 
error, than this revolutionist and exile, a natural- 
born Mugwump. 

Forced to leave the land of his birth for opinion's 
sake, Schurz was a teacher and journalist in Paris 
and London, and in 1852, when only twenty-three 
years of age, he came to America and for more than 
half a century he was a potent factor in the molding 
of public opinion in the land of his adoption. In 
1857 he was the defeated Republican candidate for 
Lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. In 1860 he was 
a conspicuous member of the historic convention that 
named Abraham Lincoln for the office of President 
of the United States. In 1861 he was the American 
Minister to Spain, a position that had been conferred 
on another of our foreign-bom citizens, himself a 
revolutionist and an exile, by President Pierce. 
Schir 'z was a brigadier general in the Union army 
in 1862 and a major general the following year. 
He saw disastrous defeat at second Bull Run and 
at Chancellors ville, helped to gain the hard-earned 



125 

victory of Gettysburg, and participated in the bril- 
liant operations around Chattanooga. 



From 1852 until the adoption of the fifteenth 
amendment of the Federal Constitution he was con- 
spicuous, in peace and in war, in the crusade against 
slavery. He beheld all the infamies of that spawn 
of a political Sycorax — Southern reconstruction. 
When the war was over he returned to journalism 
and was the Washington correspondent of the Trib- 
une. Later he was the editor of the Westliche Post 
at St. Louis. In 1868 he was the temporary chair- 
man of the Republican National Convention, which 
nominated Grant, and in the ensuing campaign he 
was one of the most eloquent orators on the stump 
and one of the most powerful writers in the press. 

In 1869 Schurz became a Senator in Congress, and 
before his term expired the country recognized in 
him one of the colossal figures of the Senate, as the 
Senate then was. There were giants in the earth in 
those days. Hamlin, the Morrills, Edmunds, Sum- 
ner, Wilson and Anthony were from New England ; 
Conkling and Fenton came from New York; 
Frelinghuysen from New Jersey, Thurman and 
Sherman from Ohio, Morton and Pratt from Indi- 
ana, Trumbull from Illinois, Carpenter and Howe 
from Wisconsin, Davis and Stevenson from Ken- 
tucky, Z. Chandler from Michigan, Alcorn from 
Mississippi, Frank Blair from Missouri, Tipton from 
Nebraska, Casserly from California, Bayard from 
Delaware. 

Perhaps the history of the Senate does not contain 
account of a more brilliant debate than that on the 
resolution looking to an investigation of what was 
called "the French Arms Sales." It ranks with 



126 

the debates on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and Schurz 
was to one what Douglas had been to the other, the 
chief figure, and perhaps the ablest. It was in 1872, 
and the despondent, pathetic, and eloquent words of 
J. Proctor Knott, in 1870, bewailing the fate of 
France, had come to be realized. Germany was 
conqueror, and the land of Du Guesclin and Dunois 
of Conde and Turenne, of Desaix and Lannes, was 
prostrate. In her delirium, France fought to the 
bitter end and purchased arms wherever they were 
to be had and money could command them. Our 
war had left immense supplies of arms on our hands 
and we sold them, and Remington & Sons, of New 
York, were large purchasers; but when Secretary 
Belknap learned that the firm were agents of France 
he rejected their bids ; yet one Richardson, a country 
lawyer of Ilion, N. Y., came on the scene and pur- 
chased as many as 40,000 muskets at a time. To 
be sure he was only the agent of the Remingtons, as 
they were the agents of France. There is little 
doubt that we had failed to observe the proper 
degrees of strict neutrality, and that was what was 
proposed to be investigated. 



It was the beginning of the national life of the 
Liberal Republican party which had originated in 
Missouri, quickened to life by the Drake Constitu- 
tion of Reconstruction days — an intolerable despot- 
ism. In the Senate Sumner, Trumbull, Fenton, Tip- 
ton and Schurz, all Republicans, were enlisted in the 
Liberal Republican movement, and the proposed 
investigation was an attack on Grant's administra- 
tion. Gen. Grant was a great man, but it may be 
that his fame suffered by reason of his two terms 
in the Presidential office. He was a military com- 



127 

mander, a great soldier with the simpHcity of a great 
captain. He it was, on the Union side, who had 
the correct conception of the war. His task was to 
take Richmond. He knew that if he attempted to 
outgeneral Lee he would go as Pope, Burnside and 
Hooker went. He set out to destroy Lee's army, and 
he knew that if he lost no more than a brigade for 
every one of Lee's regiments he put hors de com- 
bat the advantage was his, and that victory would 
be his in the end, for he could get another brigade 
to replace the one destroyed, and Lee could not get 
another regiment. Hence the Kilkenny cat business 
— "My cat'has the largest tail." It was very simple, 
therefore, very great. 

When Gen. Grant became President, about his 
second act was a message to Congress that read 
marvelously like a military order and was a virtual 
command to repeal the law that made A. T. Stewart 
ineligible to a seat in the Cabinet. Congress was 
ready to obey, and set about it, but Sumner would 
have none of it, and the President was balked. Be- 
fore the Cabinet was announced in 1869 the per- 
sonnel of it was a secret, guarded like the result of 
the deliberations of a council of war. It was inevita- 
ble that the most practical of soldiers, like the Presi- 
dent, and the most Utopian of statesmen, like the 
Senator from Massachusetts, should clash. Sumner 
was incapable of a wilful deception ; Grant believed 
that Sumner was false to his word in the Santo 
Domingo business. The President said _ of him : 
"Of course Sumner don't believe in the Bible. He 
didn't write it." The party stood by Grant, and 
Sumner was deposed from his chairmanship. It 
was well enough, for Mr. Fish, the Secretary of 
State, could not hold converse with the chairman of 



128 

Foreign Affairs, and it was said that Mr. Motley, 
our Minister to England, took his instructions from 
the Senator, instead of from the Secretary. 



Sumner made the opening speech on the resolu- 
tions to investigate the sales of arms to the agents 
of France. It was a disappointment. Though one 
of the greatest orators and most intrepid debaters 
the Senate ever knew, Sumner required study before 
he spoke, and on this occasion he was far from pre- 
pared. The administration Senators were jubilant, 
Carpenter especially sarcastic, brilliant, and able in 
his comment. Their joy was short-lived. Schurz 
not only restored the battle, but he carried dismay 
into the administration ranks. While he was speak- 
ing the wife of the President and her daughter had 
seats in the diplomatic gallery, and on the floor 
were members of the Cabinet, the aged Frank P. 
Blair, sr. ; George William Curtis, and the leading 
members of the House of Representatives, including 
Hoar, Banks, Butler, Cox and others. Perhaps the 
several speeches and colloquies of Schurz, Conkling, 
Carpenter and Morton during that debate rank with 
anything the Senate has heard since the time of 
Webster and Calhoun. The Democrats — Thurman, 
Bayard, Casserly, Davis and Stevenson — all excep- 
tionally strong men, said but little. It was a family 
quarrel and they did wisely. As an orator Conkling 
was without a peer. His sentences were like the 
man — magnificent, the admiration of his friends, the 
despair of his rivals and the wonder of all, and the 
argument of all his utterances was as able as the 
justice of his cause would admit of. It is praise 
enough for Schurz that in the esteem of many capa- 
ble judges he surpassed all of them save Conkling 



129 

alone, and as Macaulay said in comparison of Pitt 
and Fox, did not fall below Conkling. 

There was one passage between these giants where 
the German was brilliant to a degree, and recalled 
the scene when Jefferson Davis, with all the pride 
that all the blood of all the Howards could make, re- 
plied to Stephen S. Douglas : 

"I scorn your quarter !" 

Conkling introduced an amendment to the reso- 
lutions looking to an investigation of the "General 
Order" scandal in New York, with which the firm 
of Leet & Stocking was connected. Here was the 
reply of Schurz to that : 

"On the path of duty I have walked I have seen men 
far more dangerous than the Senator from New York, and 
before a thousand of them my heart will not quail. No, 
sir, I shall vote for this amendment with all the scorn 
which it deserves." 

Nothing came of the proposed investigation ex- 
cept the birth of the Liberal Republican party. Ger- 
many had licked and spoliated France, and the 
German vote was still Republican. Morton admon- 
ished Schurz that he did not carry that vote in his 
vest pocket, and that all roads that led out of the 
Republican party led into the Democratic party. 



The Liberal movement was vitalized, and but for 
the fact that the donkey was fittingly typical of the 
Democratic party in 1872, it would have been tri- 
umphant. In May the Liberal Republican leaders 
of the whole Union assembled at Cincinnati in a 
convention that was something like a mass-meeting. 
It was full of promise. There were more than 400, 
but not of the order of those who sought David in 
the cave of Adullum. They were discontent, but it 



130 

was for the country. They were Republicans, but 
they were reformers — mugwumps of subsequent 
years. Many of them were original abolitionists 
and had hung on the periods of Beecher and Phillips, 
believed in the teachings of Lloyd Garrison, and had 
mild disapproval, if disapproval it was, of the deeds 
of John Brown. Schurz was the president of the 
convention, and at that time he was probably the 
most interesting personality in the whole country. 

There was what might he called a sort of "third 
house" present and doing business, composed of 
young men, the leading journalists of the country. 
They were Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield Re- 
publican ; Whitelaw Reid, of the New York Tribune ; 
Murat Halstead, of the Cincinnati Commercial, and 
Horace White, of the Chicago Tribune. They were 
Republicans. To them came Henry Watterson, of 
the Louisville Courier-Journal, and William Hyde, 
of the St. Louis Republican, Democrats. George 
Alfred Townsend, the famous "Gath," was a dele- 
gate from Delaware. Alexander K. McClure, of the 
Philadelphia Times, was a delegate from Pennsyl- 
vania. They were all very able and brilliant men, 
and if journalistic genius could have made a Presi- 
dent, it would have been done then and there. Had 
it been left to them perhaps Charles Francis Adams 
or Lyman Trumbull would have headed the ticket, 
but while these youngsters were killing off David 
Davis, Frank Blair nominated Horace Greeley. 



It was a striking campaign that followed, and 
Greeley would have been elected if the Democrats 
could have been induced to render him as loyal sup- 
port as the Populists gave Bryan or the Gold 
Democrats gave McKinley in 1896. Though the 



131 

regular Democratic convention indorsed the ticket, 
there was a bolt, and so serious was it that Greeley 
carried Kentucky, the then banner Democratic State, 
by the beggarly plurality of only 11,000. When the 
"October" States were heard from Mr. Greeley 
made a tour of the country and delivered a series 
of the grandest speeches the country ever heard, 
before or since, emanating as they did from as noble 
a heart as ever beat in human bosom. The country 
would not hear. He failed, as Douglas and Sey- 
mour failed before him, and as Blaine and Bryan 
failed after him. 

It was pathetic, the appeal that grand old man 
made. Perhaps he was not the stuff of which 
Presidents ought to be made ; but no man ever sought 
office prompted by purer motive. The campaign 
was brutal in the extreme. It was a disgra'ce to our 
politics and to human nature. It was as selfish and 
uncharitabfe, untruthful and unchristian as the devil 
would have it be, and as the devil could have made 
it had he been ignoble enough to try his hand at it. 

That noble heart was broken, that giant intellect 
was sapped, and the best man then living died in a 
mad house, the victim of ignorance and prejudice 
and scurrility and slander and malice. 

It is a shame to human nature that Horace Greeley 
was hounded to his death, he who had written of 
another death these lines : 

"When at length the struggle ended with his last 
breath, and even his mother was convinced that his eyes 
would never again open on the scenes of this world, I 
knew that the summer of my life was over, that the chill 
breath of its autumn was at hand, and that my future 
course must be along the downhill of life." 

Let him who can read that passage unmoved ap- 



132 

prove the manner of the warfare against that broken- 
hearted father in 1872. 



In 1876 Schurz was back in the Republican party, 
and Hayes made him Secretary of Interior in his 
Cabinet. In 1884 he supported Cleveland, as he 
did in 1888 and in 1892. In the campaign of 1896 
he made what was probably the greatest speech ot 
the campaign on either side. It was an argument for 
the gold standard as unanswerable and as inexorable 
as the multiplication table. In 1900 he was bitterly 
hostile to the policy of expansion, and he became a 
leader of the "Anti-imperialists." 

"Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against 
God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, 
Why hast thou made me thus?" 

The Teuton was engaged in the work of expansion 
when Probus was Emperor of Rome, and a mighty 
man he was at the business, and has been for twenty 
centuries. If he were to stop now there would be 
another flood, and ought to be. There is nobody else 
to expand — and it has to be done. A very disagree- 
able, a very arduous, and a very expensive and 
bloody job — but it is an absolutely necessary job. 
The world must not recede ; it cannot stand still. 

Mr. Schurz wrote a "Life of Henry Clay," the 
very best work on that subject yet produced, and it 
is to be regretted that we have not a score of 
volumes of like character from his pen. 



Mr. Schurz was long the president of the Civil 
Service Reform League, and did as much as any 
other man in the effort to supplant the spoils system 
with the merit system in the public service. In one 



133 

of the most delicious satires ever spoken on the 
floor of Congress, Proctor Knott described our 
officeholding and officeseeking- class. At that time 
our system was something like the Spanish civil 
service described in "Gil Bias," and we are not alto- 
gether rid of it yet. Great men must have great men 
to help them be great. Sometimes the great man's 
great man is a greater man than the great man him- 
self, and that is no serious disadvantage. It is 
not criminal to seek office, but sometimes it is 
ridiculous. 

Cervantes wrote for all mankind. Every Ameri- 
can voter has seen the officeseeker after the order of 
Sancho Panza. When that immortal spoilsman saw 
his ambitions about to be realized he made these sage 
remarks : 

"I do not understand these philosophies; all that I 
know is that I wish I may as surely have the earldom as I 
would know how to govern it, for I have as large a soul 
as another, and as large a body as the best of them; and I 
should be as much king in my own dominican as any other 
king; and, being so, I would do what I pleased, and doing 
what I pleased, I should have my will, and having my will, 
I should be contented, and being content, there is no more 
to be desired; and when there is no more to desire, there 
is an end of it, and let the estate come; so heaven be with 
ye, and let us see it, as one blind man said to another." 

There are many "earldoms" in our land, and the 
tribe of Sanchos is legion in these glorious and free 
United States of America. 



The Hon. Jacob Hannibal Gallinger is a Senator 
in Congress from the State of New Hampshire. He 
is a tremendous worker, and labors for pensions and 
believes in offices for the "victors." Mr. Cleveland 



134 

was never so busy writing veto messages as Mr. 
Gallinger in writing favorable reports. 

Mr. Gallinger engaged in a newspaper controv- 
ersy with Carl Schurz on the subject of Civil Service 
Reform, and here is what he was foolish enough to 
say in one of his letters : 

"It were probably better to suffer you to lapse again 
into that political obscurity where your disloyalty to the 
Republican party precipitated you than to gratify your 
yearning desire for notoriety by keeping you longer in 
public view, into whose presence you have seized this 
opportunity of obtruding yourself." 

We are told that Thackeray said that when he 
wrote the passage in "Vanity Fair" where Becky 
Sharp falls in love with her husband as soon as she 
lost him — the time he thrashed the noble roue whom 
he found his wife's guest at a very inauspicious hour 
— he involuntarily broke his pen. He thought the 
passage a fine one, and it is one of the master- 
strokes of his superlative genius ; but Thackeray 
could not have been as well satisfied with his compo- 
sition as Senator Gallinger was with his epistle to 
Schurz, of which the above is an extract. No doubt 
he broke the pen. 

It was one occasion when, on the path of duty he 
had walked, Mr. Schurz met a man before whom his 
heart quailed. But it was necessary to say some- 
thing, and here is what he said. After reproaching 
the Senator for his cruelty in taunting him with 
his obscurity, he continued : 

"Nature and fortune are sparing with their choicest 
gifts. On you they have lavished a rare combination of 
genius and success. The great and powerful of this world 
should at least be generous enough not to scoff at the 
feeble and insignificant. You are a genuine celebrity. 
Your noble defiance of President Harrison on account of 



135 

a consulship, of which your biographer tells us, and your 
valiant battle for post-offices and revenue places have car- 
ried your fame into the remotest corners of New Hamp- 
shire. The fearless statesmanship of your attack on the 
'hopping test' in the Senate has made your colleagues and 
many other people prick up their ears with amazed curios- 
ity. The stranger in the Senate gallery, directory in hand, 
easily identifies you on the floor of the chamber as the 
occupant of chair No. 7. 

"Having been a member of the Senate myself, I know 
what such triumphs mean. No wonder you are proud 
But do not let the pride of your greatness, however just, 
harden your heart against ordinary mortals. Everybody 
loves fame. You have it in abundance. Why do you 
blame me for coveting a little of it? Do not grudge me 
that passing gleam of notoriety which comes to me 
through the reflex of your renown in having my narne 
mentioned for a few days together with yours in this 
public discussion." 

When that consummate baseball general, Comis- 
key, was captain of the famed St. Louis Browns his 
second baseman was "Yankee" Robinson, affection- 
ately mentioned as "Robbie." "Robbie" could al- 
ways be depended on to claim everything. Many 
was the time when he was "out" by two rods that he 
would emerge from the dust, shake himself and ex- 
claim, "Never tetched me!" 

That is what the Hon. Gallinger said when he 
read the foregoing retorts of Schurz. 



EDWARD WARD CARMACK. 

And the king said unto his servants: "Know ye not 
that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in 
Israel?" 

Whether this man was more richly endowed with 
those qualities for which good men loved him than 
he was bounteously gifted with those attributes for 



136 

which intellectual men admired him will never be 
known. He was the most brilliant mind with which 
my mind ever had personal commune, and he was the 
knightliest man whose hand my hand ever elapsed. 
He was the greatest son of the South during his 
entire public career, and the North, as bitterly as the 
South, is filled with indignant horror over the deep 
damnation of his taking off. 

They who slew him builded fatefuler than they 
knew, for they completed Tennessee's immortal trio 
of demigods in Valhalla — Andrew Jackson, Nathan 
Bedford Forrest and Edward Ward Carmack. The 
legislature of Tennessee owes it to the good men and 
women of that State, and to the entire South, to 
take measures to have carved out of purest Carrara 
a statue of Carmack to place in the hall of the old 
House of Representatives at Washington to serve 
for exemplar that the youth of future generations 
may strive to emulate his nobility of character and 
rival his splendor of genius. 

But Carmack survives in millions and millions of 
Southern hearts, and his influence is more puissant 
in death than it even was in life. 



Just fifty years and 4 days old, on that fateful 
Monday, November 9, Edward Ward Carmack had 
scarce emerged from his physical prime and was 
just entering into his intellectual zenith. Without 
any loss of brilliancy, he was daily augmenting and 
solidifying his transcendent intellectual powers, and 
the golden promises of an exuberant efflorescence 
was then yielding a harvest of plenty beyond the 
dreams of hope itself. 

In a twinkling he was cut down, and all without 
warning, as he was peacefully on his way from the 



137 

place where he worked to the place where he slept, 
and thus he fills a martyr's grave, because he was a 
man whose pen dared write what his heart dared 
forge — one who never feared to look on the face of 
man. When we contemplate the trivial provocation 
pleaded by those who so savagely took his life, 
we cannot but agree with Bishop Hoss that Carmack 
was murdered, not for what he had written, but 
for what it was feared he would write. 

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; 
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading; 
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not; 
But to those men that sought him sweet as summer. 



Great as Carmack was in either House of Con- 
gress, eloquent as he was on the stump, powerful as 
he was as an advocate before "twelve men in a box," 
he was yet made for the editorial chair of a widely 
read independent political newspaper. Like Clement 
L. Vallandigham, Carmack was too positive and too 
intense a nature to gain a great place at the bar, 
except before the jury. Unlike the politician, the 
lawyer cannot choose his cause, and Carmack was a 
man who could not argue a brief in the rectitude of 
which he had little faith. He had the intellect to 
command the logic, and the mind to analyze a legal 
principle; but he did not have the temperament of 
a lawyer as did Ben Hill, or Matt Carpenter, or 
Allen G. Thurman, or John G. Carlisle. 

Hence it was perfectly natural for Carmack to 
abandon the bar for the forum. He became an edi- 
tor, and no more gifted pen ever reinforced that 
noble profession. Perhaps our country has produced 
but two perfect newspaper men — Charles A. Dana 



138 

and Joseph B. McCulloch — possibly Henry J. Ray- 
mond might be added to the hst. These were as 
great as writers as they were as gatherers of news. 
Carmack was not a news man ; but as a commentator 
on events and on men, as the advocate of living 
principles, American journalism has rarely known 
his equal, and never known his superior. One of 
his favorite authors was Edgar Allan Poe, and with 
the exception of Poe, the first man of letters of our 
hemisphere, I do not believe Edward Ward Carmack 
ever had a superior in America in the mastery of the 
expression of the English tongue. He was a dull 
man who would not forego a night's sleep to hear 
Ned Carmack recite "Annabel Lee." 



But before Carmack laid hand on Poe he had 
drank copiously at that richest fount of our speech, 
the English Bible. Except Benjamin F. Butler, I re- 
call no man in our public life who quoted so fre- 
quently and so aptly from Sacred Writ as he. He 
reveled in the Psalms, and in the pulpit he would 
have been another Simpson, perhaps another Camp- 
bell. In the editorial chair he was far more than 
a gifted writer. He was a student and a thinker. 
But he was more, infinitely more than that, than 
these, than all — he believed something, and like an- 
other Luther, he would go to AVorms though it were 
to his death, and so he did, and so he was a martyr 
to duty and to country. 

Though an editor were Hazlett, Macaulay and 
Hume combined, and had no belief except as the 
wind listeth, he would be a Samson without his locks 
— one Greelev, or one Carmack, worth ten thousand 
like him. To convince others one must himself be 
convinced, to move others, one must himself be 



139 

moved. It was his character and his beliefs that 
made Carmack the force he was, that commanded the 
love of milHons, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that brought 
him to an untimelv p-rave. 



In the national councils Carmack took the place 
left vacant by the transfer of Lamar to the Cabinet 
and the bench. Though so prodigally endowed by 
nature, Carmack trod no royal road o civic emi- 
nence. The rich soil of his mind was ceaselessly 
cultivated. He burned the midnight oil in commun- 
ings with the mighty minds that had left their im- 
press on the world, and while others slept he delved 
in the lore of past ages, digested and assimilated 
the wisdom of those who had gone before. That 
was what made him so formidable and so ready in 
debate. That was what made him feared in intel- 
lectual combat as neither Ingalls nor Reed was 
feared. 

One cannot compare Carmack and Ben Hill, or 
Carmack and Judah P. Benjamin, or Carmack and 
James S. Green. He was as different from Robert 
Toombs as the rapier of Crichton from the hammer 
of Thor. Withal he had the heart of Burke to 
sympathize with suffering and to hate cruelty 
everywhere. His speech in loathing and denuncia- 
tion of "Hell-roaring Jake" Smith's infamous order 
in the Philippines was as lofty a specimen of indig- 
nant eloquence as ever the United States Senate 
heard. 

"And this," he exclaimed, "the President tells us, 
is 'benevolent assimilation !' " 

"And how would the Senator characterize it?" 
demanded Foraker. 



140 

Quick as a flash came the retort, "I call it male- 
volent annihilation." 



Carmack was not the constitutional lawyer that 
Carlisle was, for his genius did not trend that way, 
and for the same reason he had not the mastery of 
economic subjects possessed by John Sharp Wil- 
liams, but in a great constitutional debate he would 
have been an invaluable lieutenant to Carlisle, and 
to Williams he could have brought aid like that 
Blucher carried to Wellington. In the fundamentals 
he was all that Carlisle or Mills was, but he had de- 
voted the study to history and to literature that they 
brought to detail of law and economy. 

Lamar had a more riotous imagination than Car- 
mack; and I am persuaded that had Carmack been 
as much of a dreamer as was Lamar, and indulged in 
more introspection he would have been a more extra- 
ordinary man than he was ; but Carmack was a man 
of action as well as a man of thought, and as a 
soldier he would have been as superb on the field as 
he was great as a lawgiver in the Senate. He was a 
born leader, and Isham G. Harris was the only man 
he ever saw of whom he was content to be a follower. 
The time Lamar spent in dreaming Carmack de- 
voted to work — reading or writing. In committee 
Lamar was often inert ; but Carmack was a positive 
force there. In open Senate, when both were aroused 
to action, they were equals — Lamar the finer imag- 
ination, Carmack the more caustic wit, the more 
rollicking humor. In diction the scale nearly bal- 
anced between them. 

Carmack was ten years in Congress — four in the 
House and six in the Senate. Ben Hill served two 
years in the House and five in the Senate. Except 



141 

Lamar, I doubt if any other American ever made so 
enviable a reputation in the national councils in so 
limited a service as Hill and Carmack. Hill was 
there but seven years to Carmack's ten, but his op- 
portunities were greater. Carmack had no such 
theme and no such adversary as Hill encountered 
when he utterly crushed Blaine in the debate of the 
general amnesty resolution. Nor did Carmack have 
the chance that came to Hill when he annihilated 
Mahone. t'erhaps no other Southerner since the 
war, unless Carlisle or Eustis was he, could have 
contended with Carpenter as Hill did on the Con- 
stitutional question involved in the debate of the con- 
tested election of Senators from Louisiana. 

But all in all John T. Morgan's estimate is just 
and it will hold — that Carmack was the most bril- . 
liant man the Senate knew for the thirty years that 
Morgan was a Senator. 

If I were asked to cite the most beautifully pathetic 
and the most loftily patriotic burst of eloquence that 
ever fell from the lips of American orator, I should 
tender Carmack's tribute to the South. It was my 
happy fortune to hear it as it fell from his "iron 
lips." Though then his political enemy — I a goldbug 
— I was transfixed with wonder that turned to rap- 
ture ere he finished the noble sentiment. The entire 
House was entranced — Republicans as much so as 
Democrats — and even the stern and cynical Reed 
gazed on the orator and drank in the words as one 
bewitched. I have seen the House moved to more 
tumultuous applause by William L. Wilson and 
Bourke Cochran, but never in my time — now more 
than thirty years — has that House been so pro- 
foundly impressed, so deeply stirred, as when Car- 



142 

mack bowed and sat down that day. There were too 
many tears for riot. 

I know I shall be pardoned for inserting- it here : 

The South is a land that has known sorrows; it is a 
land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with 
its tears; a land scared and riven by the plowshare of 
war and billowed with the graves of her dead, but a land 
of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic 
memories. To that land every drop of my blood, every 
fibre of my being, every pulsation of my heart is conse- 
crated forever. I was born of her womb; I was nurtured 
at her breast, and when my last hour shall come I pray 
God I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to 
sleep within her tender and encircling arms. 

I have one suggestion to make, one prayer to offer 
— that every Southern mother teach her child, the 
pride of her home, and the hope of her land, to repeat 
that matchless passage. Plant it in his memory 
when it is young and plastic. It cannot but lead him 
to noble thoughts and generous impulses. 

Genius, statesman, orator, publicist, patriot, gen- 
tleman. Christian, farewell — "the first Southerner 
of his day!" is thy epitaph! 



WILLIAM PINKNEY. 

Was Pinkney a greater advocate than Choate? 
It is impossible to say. Each was the first of his 
generation. Marshall and Story, perhaps the two 
best judges of such a matter our country has pro- 
duced, were agreed that Pinkney was the foremost 
lawyer who ever pleaded before them, and thus they 
put him above Webster himself. William Wirt was 
a delightful man and a learned lawyer, twelve years 
Attorney-General, and he was never quite fair in 



143 

his estimate of his rival, but after Pinkiiey's death 
Wirt agreed that he was the greatest lawyer of his 
time. It was somehing grand to have been the 
leading counsel in the great cause involving the 
constitutionality of the United States Bank and with 
Webster and Wirt for juniors, but Pinkney had 
that distinction and gained the case, though opposed 
by Martin, Hopkinson and Jones. It was claimed 
for Pinkney that John Marshall put more of his 
pleas in his decisions than any other man's, and in 
one of them Marshall, though deciding against him, 
paid a compliment such as Socrates might have be- 
stowed on Pericles. In rebuke of Charles Sumner, 
the late Matthew H. Carpenter gave an estimate of 
Rufus Choate, that applies with equal force to 
Pinkney. Charles James. Fox declared that one of 
Lord Erskine's speeches before a jury in the Court 
of King's Bench, was the most perfect specimen of 
human reasoning that had ever come under his no- 
tice, and it is very doubtful if Erskine was th^ 
superior of Pinkney as an advocate, or, as a reasoner. 



William Pinkney was born at Annapolis, Md., a 
subject of the British Crown, March 17, 1764. 
Annapolis was then the Athens of the western 
hemisphere, with a society as cultured as that of 
Williamsburg, and the father of Pinkney was a 
leader of that community. The family came of an 
adventurer, who fought for the Conqueror at Hast- 
ings, and when the Pinkneys crossed the ocean, one 
branch settled in Maryland and the other in South 
Carolina, where they added C to the name. The 
father of William Pinkney was a Tory during the 
war of the Revolution. Had he lived in an earlier 
day he would have preached passive obedience. He 



144 

had held the King's commission, had subscribed to 
the oath of loyahy and refused to rebel against the 
Crown. His estate was confiscated by the colonial 
establishment, though the man's personal character 
was so stainless that he retained the respect of the 
patriots even in those strenuous times. So far as 
I know, Pinkney is the only statesman who ever 
player a great part in our country, and was the son 
of a Tory. That he reached such eminence is a 
tribute to the personal character of his father as 
well as to his own transcendent abilities. We find 
him when a very young man a member of the con- 
vention to form a constitution for Maryland two 
years before the Constitution of the United States 
went into effect. The passions of the struggle were 
still alive, and yet this son of a leading Tory was 
thus honored by that patriot constituency. 

The confiscation of his estate left the Elder 
Pinkney a poor man, and the son did not have the 
advantages of a thorough education in his earliest 
manhood; but William Pinkney was an extraordin- 
ary character, and when President Washington ap- 
pointed him Commissioner to England, under the 
Jay treaty, he employed a private tutor and plunged 
into the study of the classics, that most men master, 
if they master them at all, in their classes at college. 
It will be recalled that Erskine was at first an officer 
in the English Navy, and subsequently held a com- 
mission in the English Army, before he studied for 
the bar. Pinkney studied physic and expected to 
be a doctor before he found cut what the hand of 
God had fashioned him for. 

It was in the office of that Judge Chase, whom 
John Randolph, of Roanoke, impeached, that Pink- 
ney began to read law, and he was admitted to the 



145 

bar in 1786, at the age of 22. Little did the courts 
that licensed him to practice, dream that here was 
one who would eclipse in the profession the genius 
and the fame of Luther Martin, then the head of 
the American bar, who pleaded successfully the cause 
of Burr against Wirt, and the cause of Chase against 
Randolph. In 1788 he was chosen a member of the 
State Legislature, and it is a fact somewhat curious 
that his splendid genius for forensic eloquence first 
burst into radiant bloom in speeches in advocacy of 
the emancipation of the slaves. 



In 1796 Washington appointed Pinkney Commis- 
sioner under the Jay treaty, and he took up his resi- 
dence in London, where he remained for eight 
years. It was that tremendous epoch when England 
was in a death grapple with the Corsican, and it was 
now and here that Pinkney got his education. He 
attended the debates of Parliament at a time when 
the House of Commons was the first Senate of that 
or any other age. He heard Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheri- 
dan, Grey, Erskine, Canning, Dundas, and little 
did that matchless galaxy dream that in that youth- 
ful American commissioner, who sat within their 
bar, in rapt attention to their disputations, was one 
who might have rivaled the greatest of them, the 
equafof Pitt in the Senate or Erskine at the bar. 
Pitt was Pinkney's favorite; it was after Pitt that 
he fashioned his style, and he declared : "I could sit 
there forever and listen to Mr. Pitt." 

During his residence in London Pinkney was an 
untiring and a • laborious student. He visited the 
courts of law and equity and added vast stores to his 
already abundant knowledge of Anglo-Saxon juris- 
prudence, and it was here that he fitted himself for 



146 

first place at the American bar. In 1806 President 
Jefferson commissioned him to return to England 
and attempt to patch up the quarrel that led to war 
six years later. Napoleon had crushed Prussia at 
Jena, and from the palace of Frederick the Great had 
issued the "Berlin Decree," that England answered 
by an "order in council." Between the two titanic 
belligerents America was treated both injuriously 
and contumeliously. And now Pinkney was Envoy 
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, and 
as such he averted war for some years. When the 
war was inevitable, Lord Holland, the nephew of 
Charles James Fox, offered to give asylum to Pink- 
ney's son in his own household in order that he 
might complete his education. 



Pinkney returned to the United States in 1811, 
and was appointed Attorney-General in President 
Madison's Cabinet. Of the previous fifteen years 
he had spent thirteen abroad, but the day he got 
the position that made him the titular leader of 
American bar he was also the actual leader of it. 
He continued in the Cabinet until Congress enacted 
a law requiring the Attorney-General to reside at 
the National Capital, when he resigned and was 
succeeded by Richard Rush. 

In the war of 1812 he commanded a company, and 
was severely wounded at the battle of Bladensburg. 
This should have reversed the attainder of his 
father, and doubtless it did in public estimation. It 
was the age of the pamphleteer. "Junius" was not 
a score of years off the stage in England, and the 
pamphlet served the office of the editorial page of 
the political newspaper of our day. Pinkney entered 
this field, and he was as able with the pen as he was 



147 

: ^ 

eloquent with the tongue. He was now in the full 
meridian of his splendid intellectual powers and 
ranked among the first statesmen of his time. 



In 1815 he was elected to Congress, but served 
only a few weeks, when he resigned to accept the 
position of Minister to Russia. It was during this 
Congress — the Fourteenth — that he had a debate 
with Randolph, when the latter began with this sen- 
tence : "I rise to oppose the motion of the gentleman 
from Maryland," and then, after a pause, continued 
in parenthesis, "I believe he is from Maryland." It 
was a trick Randolph had. Never was there another 
American who could do so much with a parenthetic 
sentence. The House roared with laughter as Ran- 
dolph thus pretended to be in doubt as to what state 
the first orator in Congress hailed from. In our day 
one might as well have questioned whether Reed 
was from Maine or Carlisle from Kentucky. 

Pinkney was eminently successful in his mission, 
and returned to the United States two years later 
and entered actively upon the practice of his pro- 
fession, but in 1820 Maryland sent him to the 
Senate, and in 1822 he died — the first orator, the 
first lawyer, and one of the foremost statesmen of 
his time. He was but fifty-eight years of age. 



If one would discover what a giant Pinkney was 
let him read the speech of February 15, 1820, on the 
Missouri question. It was in reply to Rufus King, 
and we can easily believe the tradition that King 
remarked while Pinkney was speaking, that his own 
position was unconstitutional. Never was there an 
American orator who suffered more from the re- 
porters. He could not be reported. He could not 



148 

even report himself after he had concluded the effort. 
He was a powerful reasoner, a matchless orator, 
learned in his profession and rich in the acquired 
knowledge that is gained from general literature. 

I believe the world lost much because Humphrey, 
Marshall and Rufus Choate were not ten years col- 
leagues in the United States Senate and on opposing 
sides; but if one will read the debates between Ben 
Hill and Matt Carpenter on the Louisiana Senator- 
ship he will get a good idea of what a debate between 
Marshall and Choate would have been had they 
clashed. 



I do not believe that Choate, or Marshall, or Car- 
penter, or Hill ever equaled the speech William 
Pinkney made on the Missouri question in the Six- 
teenth Congress. There are parts of it that remind 
you of some of Allen G. Thurman's strongest argu- 
ments. I know of nothing else like it. When the 
Constitution of the United States went into effect, 
Pinkney was twenty-three years of age. He was a 
public man thirty-five years under that Constitution, 
one-half of which time was spent abroad in the 
diplomatic service. He was elected to the National 
House twice, and both times resigned before the 
term expired. He was a member of the Senate two 
years. In all, he was in the National Legislature 
less than four years. 

What a giant he would have been had he been 
bred to it like Clay, Webster and Calhoun. The trio 
would have been a quartette. 



149 
THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
Rough-hew them how we will. — Hamlet. 

There have been numerous books written on "The 
Slave Power," a few of them very good Hterature, 
and most of them utterly worthless as letters, and 
worse than worthless as history. In the second 
quarter of the last century the Anglo-Saxon in 
Texas conquered his independence from the 
mongrel of Mexico, and it became only a ques- 
tion of time when the lone star of the new republic 
should be one of the cluster of stars of the great re- 
public. That was the work of "The Slave Power," 
and much resented by our then brethren at the North. 
It made the war with Mexico, and Thomas Corwin 
spoke of bloody hands, hospitals, graves, and so on. 
In a speech in Congress, John Quincy Adams plead- 
ed the cause of Mexico with characteristic and con- 
summate ability. A braw son of Massachusetts fell 
in that struggle, and Faneuil Hall was denied his 
comrades as a place where the remains might lie in 
state while the funeral oration was pronounced. 

This was no evidence that Boston, Massachusetts, 
New England, and Tom Corwin were unpatriotic. 
It was only the ebullition of the Northern conscience, 
a protest against what certain elements conceived to 
be a pervesion of the American system and a crime 
against liberty. Hosea Bigelow was the New Eng- 
land conscience in homely verse. 

And yet the Mexican war was civilization march- 
ing on, and emancipation was in its train. The hand 
of destiny was in that war. Civilization stood with 
Taylor at Buena Vista and conquered with Scott 
at Chapultepec. Fate wrote the treaty of peace 



150 

and treaty of cession at Guadaloupe Hidalgo, and it 
was tantamount to a declaration of relentless war 
against the institution of slavery in the American 
Union. Had there been no annexation of Texas and 
no Mexican war, there would have been no Wilmot 
Proviso and no repeal of the Missouri restriction. 
The slavery issue would not have been paramount in 
politics, and the conflict between free soil and slave 
would not have been irrepressible. There would 
have been no disruption of the Democratic party 
and no election of a President by electoral votes en- 
tirely from one section. There would have been no 
secession and no war, and slavery would have died 
a natural death. Lincoln and Davis would be mere 
names, and Grant and Lee, Sheridan and Stonewall 
Jackson, Thomas and Forrest would not have con- 
tributed epics of valor to the story of arms and been 
demigods in the temples of Valhalla. 

But who is to deny that the fame of American 
prowess, as it was illustrated in that tremendous 
struggle, is worth all it cost? The curious thing 
about the politics immediately leading to the struggle 
is that the South was rushing to the destruction 
of slavery and the North did all possible to restrain 
her in her fatuous career. And hence the quotation 
from Hamlet is pertinent. 



By the treaty of cession at the close of the Mexi- 
can war, California became a possession of the 
United States, and soon was caused to yield her 
boundless treasure to the service of mankind. "The 
Pacific Slope" was a new term coined for our geo- 
graphical nomenclature, and was now a halting place 
for civilization in its westward course around the 
globe from Orient to Orient. Inseparably linked 



151 

with the history of California is the name of one of 
the most brilhant charlatans of Christendom. John 
C. Fremont was a scintillating failure in the many- 
fields of endeavor he undertook — as soldier, as 
statesman, as financier, as promoter. His candidature 
for the Presidency of the United States in 1856 was 
a curiosity, a whimsically and a vicissitude. The 
large vote he received was a warning that the 
South fatuously gave all too little heed to. 
His election would have been the destruction 
of the Union. It would have died in the midst 
of a war that would have been a vast John Brown 
raid against a solid and desperate South, and without 
adequate support at the North He was a general 
in the great war that came four years after his de- 
feat, and a general with a single fight and that a 
disastrous defeat. And yet this man, with such 
consummate genius for failure, was able to muster a 
considerable and a threatening following in 1864 
that nominated him for President of the United 
States in the hope of the repudiation and retirement 
of Abraham Lincoln, who bore not only the fortunes 
of the Republican party, but the destiny of the 
American people. 

Fremont was called the "Pathfinder." and 10,000 
other adventurers — forty-niners — were as good 
pathfinders as he. He acquired vast areas of land 
in the new State, and it was said that his gold mines 
were richer than Ophir, and yet he was always in 
need of money, and one of the names they gave him 
was "a millionaire without a cent." 



The Anglo-Saxon boasts of the episode of Runny- 
mede, where the barons bullied and sheared their 
King, and of the sessions of the Long Parliament, 



152 

where the commons conquered Hberty from their 
King. They boast of the bill of rights, the revolu- 
tion of 1688, the Protestant succession, and the 
Mutiny Bill. On our side we boast of the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the successful rebellion 
of '76. But one of the noblest triumphs of our race, 
and one, strange to say, we rarely exploit, was the 
system of "claims" in the gold fields of California. 
It was founded on that eternal sense of justice that 
some Prometheus filched for us from heaven, a fire 
eternal, "the greatest attribute of God." The "staked 
claims" of the mines were not exactly invented by the 
Forty-niners, but they were adopted and maintained 
by them. The adjudications of land titles by the 
supreme bench of Kentucky, down to 1850, are one 
of the most splendid monuments of human juris- 
prudence, and an authority wherever English law 
maintains. They are, indeed, the perfection of hu- 
man reason, clothed in the simplest speech of the 
English tongue. It is gravely to be doubted if all 
the encomiums the Kentucky decisions have extorted 
from the learned jurists of Westminster are worth 
the compliment the rude and unlettered adventurers 
of California paid them, when they unconsciously 
adopted their principles and applied them to the 
"staked claims," Here was abstract justice applied 
to the human economy — here was the Saxon build- 
ing a state. 

Within two years after the discovery of gold in 
California the "compromise of 1850" was enacted 
by Congress, and under the operation of that legisla- 
tion California became a State of the Union. It was 
the last effort Henry Clay made for peace between 
the sections. It was the occasion when Webster, 
pleading for the Union, forfeited the confidence of 



153 

his constituency. There are two opinions in Massa- 
chusetts about that speech to this day — the senior 
Senator from the old Commonweatlh, taking the 
cue for the Quaker poet of Massachusetts, would 
walk backward and throw a bed quilt over his 
Titanic predecessor, while the late Mr. Hoar dis- 
covered, or, rather, opined, that Webster, with intel- 
lectual vision clearer than all his fellows, and with 
an unselfish patriotism that might shame all his 
critics, saw the war between brethren then in the 
womb of the future, and on that memorable 7th of 
March exerted all his tremendous faculties and 
matchless eloquence to make it an abortion. 



California had some strenuous politics, mostly 
Democratic, in her early history. There were Gwin 
and Weller and Broderick. The last named recalls 
one of the most unfortunate of men — his slayer, 
David Terry, sinning much and was not a little sinned 
against. He was the victim of untoward circum- 
stance and fell a prey to passions that had been 
baited to desperation. When he went on the field 
against Broderick it was with no expectation that 
he would survive the duel, and yet it has gone 
forth, and is generally believed that it was virtually 
an assassination. It is a very logical ending of a 
meeting of that sort that one of the principals is 
killed, and it is a very unmanly thing to repudiate 
the judgment of a tribunal to which one has ap- 
pealed. Later in life Terry was in the wiles of that 
worst of all things, animate or inanimate — a woman 
devoid of principle. 

For she cast down many wounded; yea, many strong 
men have been slain by her. 



154 

Her house is the way to hell, going down to the 
chambers of death. 

Or as a great writer of profane letters has it : 

She was the Queen of Pleasure, an image of human en- 
joyment that scatters the treasure amassed by three genera- 
tions, that laughs at corpses, makes sport of ancestors, 
dissolves hearts and thrones, makes young men old and 
often makes old men young. 

This Strong man made weak by a bad woman is 
only another witness that "the wages of sin is 
death." 



But when the future historian comes to tell the 
story of the Pacific Coast, if he is fit for the business, 
his most fascinating chapter will be devoted to its 
successful captains of industry — Huntington, Stan- 
ford, Hopkins, Crocker, Sharon, Ralston, Mackay, 
Fair, Flood, O'Brien, Hearst, Spreckles, and others 
of that ilk. Of these Huntington was certainly the 
greatest, both in conception and in execution; his 
the clearest brain, his the strongest and the cunning- 
est hand. What a daring thought that, when in 
1863, he, an obscure and not opulent merchant of a 
small town, determined to build the railroad connect- 
ing the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean, and 
how like an Eastern tale is the stor)^ of that vast 
undertaking carried to triumphant realization five 
years later. 

Sharon was to financial combination what Hunt- 
ington was to material development, to banking 
what Jay Gould was to transportation. Huntington, 
Mackay and Fair saw in him what Vanderbilt. Sage 
and Morgan saw in Gould — the wizard of combina- 
tion. He had been bred to the bar in Ohio and had 



155 

studied the profession in the office of Edwin M. 
Stanton. His health failed, and he went back to 
live on the farm and lived out of doors until he was 
again physically robust. Subsequently he was in 
Missouri, and when yet a young- man he and a part- 
ner made a speculative venture to the Pacific. They 
freighted a ship with merchandise and sent it by 
way of the Horn, while Sharon personally conducted 
a caravan the overland route. They were fortunate 
and reaped a rich reward. Sharon then engaged in 
the real estate business in the Occidental metropolis, 
and soon he was a capitalist of large means. 

About this time Sharon fell in with the famous 
Ralston, the most daring speculator even of the 
California of that day. D. O. Mills was president 
of the Bank of California, then, as now, the strongest 
financial institution on the Pacific Coast, and Ralston 
was associated with him in a subordinate capacity. 
When Mills withdrew, Sharon succeeded him as 
the leading spirit of the bank. The two made a 
wonderful combination. Sharon had the genius to 
conceive and Ralston the hand to execute. Their 
operations were vast and gigantic and embraced the 
Comstock bonanzas of Nevada, and their gains were 
enormous. 



It was in 1863 perhaps that the Republican party 
needed two additional Senators in Congress, and to 
secure them Nevada, now for nearly half a century, 
the "Old Sarum" of the American electorate, was 
made a sovereign State of the American Union, 
William M. Stewart and James W. Nye were the 
first Senators, and their votes secured the passage of 
the resolution submitting to the States the thirteenth 
amendment to the Federal Constitution. In 1872 a 



156 

rich man coveted the seat of Mr. Nye and g"ot it. He 
held it exactly thirty years, and then retired. In 
1875 Sharon wanted Stewart's seat, got it, and was 
Senator for a single term. Politics drew his at- 
tention from finance, and while he was mending po- 
litical fences in "Old Sarum," Ralston engaged in 
reckless and disastrous speculation in California, 
with the result that the Bank of California failed for 
millions. Ralston was bankrupt and a suicide, and 
his personal debt to Sharon was $2,000,000. 

Then it was that Sharon set about a task, one 
of the most stupendous in the annals of finance. He 
resolved to restore and maintain the credit of the 
Bank of California. It was a period of financial 
panic and industrial depression the world over. En- 
terprise was nowhere, and the ablest financiers of 
the country regarded Sharon as a Quixote, and pre- 
dicted his financial ruin. But he never wavered. Se- 
curing a pair in the Senate, he devoted all his genius 
as a financier to the reestablishment of the material 
wealth and the maintenance of the sound credit of 
the Bank of California. He succeeded. His work 
reads like the military campaigns of Montrose, and 
were to the exchange what those victories were to 
arms, and more, too, for the victories of the banker 
bore opulent fruit, whilst the victories of the soldier 
were barren of all but effulgent glory. 



Those fathers of ours who made the Constitution 
of the United States builded broader than they knew. 
We are gradually but surely coming to the pass that 
the general welfare clause of that sacred instrument 
is the paramount and governing principle of our sys- 
tem, and that whatever is desirable is constitutional. 



157 

Congresses dominated by Jefferson Davis, Robert 
Toombs and James M. Mason never dreamed of di- 
rect appropriations from the Federal Treasury for 
the construction of levees on the Lower Missis- 
sippi River. Such a project would not have re- 
ceived a single vote in either House in the fifties. 
Now such appropriation is a matter of course, and 
an ordinary expenditure of the Federal establish- 
ment. And so it was bound to follow — for inno- 
vation begets innovation — that appropriations would 
ultimately be made for the irrigation of arid lands 
between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Moun- 
tains. Nor is it intended to stop at that, for it is 
proposed that the federal government purchase vast 
areas of the Appalachian chain in order to preserve 
its forests and thus conserve, and in some measure, 
regulate, the water supply of the East Mississippi 
valley. It may be recalled that time was when the 
valley of the Gaudalquiver in Spain was the garden 
of Europe, supporting a great population of the 
most generous consumers then in the world; but 
its forests were destroyed, its water supply wasted, 
the deepest pools became the most obstinate of bars, 
and sandy deserts succeeded the most fertile fields. 
The population degenerated and decayed, and is 
now only one-sixth of what it was when the Moor 
yet dreamed in the Alhambra. 



ASPERITY AND AMENITY IN POLITICS 

The less men know about a thing the more apt 
are they to quarrel about it. Hence it was that there 
was the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Neither 
Guise nor Coligny knew anything about the true 



158 

spirit of Christianity; the Sermon on the Mount 
was all Greek to them, and that degenerate monster 
and irresponsible madman, who was King of France 
at the time, knew even less about it than did these 
heroes. The massacre of Glencoe, more than a 
century later, was as political as the affair of Saint 
Bartholomew was religious, and both were a mixture 
of religion and politics. There was infinitely more 
atrocity, all things considered, in the Scottish butch- 
ery of Catholics and Jacobites than there had been in 
the French slaughter of Huguenots and Navarrese. 
In those days wars grew out of differences of re- 
ligious faiths more frequently than they were due to 
conflicts of political interests, though the two were 
often commingled. 

It is a fascinating chapter in history, the story of 
France when Valois, Bourbon and Lorraine were 
contending for the mastery. All were fanatics in 
perpetual war, with the Christian religion the para- 
mount issue. The age was heroic and infamous, and 
deeds of daring in the field were linked with con- 
spiracies of ignominy, in the council. Assassination 
was practiced by all, and Coligny was murdered the 
eve of St. Bartholomew simply because the greatest 
of the Guises had been murdered only a short while 
before by a Huguenot. They were terribly in 
earnest in their savage faiths, both Catholic and 
Protestant, and each one believed that he was the 
more acceptable to the Lamb of God the more he 
could put in practice the creed of Moloch. Guise, 
father and son, Francis and Henry, of the House of 
Lorraine, fell by the hand of the assassin, so did 
Henry III, the last of the Valois, and so did Henry 
IV, the first of the Bourbon dynasty. 



159 

The world has outgrown that sort of thing. A 
religious war is an impossibility in the Christendom 
of the twentieth century, and it is much more diffi- 
cult to start a political war nowadays than it was 
two centuries ago, when the powers had to fight 
every decade to regulate the balance of power of 
Europe. The less men knew about religion the 
more ready they were to fight for it, and the less 
they knew about politics the more certain they were 
to fight about it. 

In 1872 the Republicans gained as great a victory 
as that they achieved in 1904 ; but when the last ses- 
sion of the Forty-second Congress convened there 
was little good-fellowship between the members of 
opposite parties in the two Houses. The Democrats 
hated Benjamin F. Butler, the real Republican lead- 
er, with all the hatred of fear and all the hatred of 
loathing. George F. Hoar was a Representative 
from Massachusetts, and he marched under the 
folds of the bloody shirt. John A. Bingham was 
yet prosecuting, in fervid eloquence and declamatory 
tones, traitors and doing his utmost to make treason 
odious. Even Dan Voorhees, a most lovable man, 
was not welcome on the Republican side, and Lewis 
D. Campbell, an old Whig, a Republican of an earlier 
day, but now a Democrat, who had defeated Robert 
C. Schenck in the Dayton district, was looked upon 
as a renegade, as bad, if not worse than Vallandig- 
ham. Garfield had never said a word of magnan- 
imity in speaking of the prostrate South, but with 
all his splendid talents he had promoted reconstruc- 
tion and was guilty of the stupendous folly of sup- 
posing that people of the same blood as himself could 



160 

be ruled by their former slaves of the lowest and 
most inferior of all the races of the human family. 



How different is it now ! In 1872 the Republicans 
were jubilant, exultant, domineering, arrogant in 
their victory. In 1904 they scarcely mentioned it 
when the Fifty-eighth Congress convened. It was 
not that they were no longer partisans, for within a 
few weeks they were to make a party issue of this 
question : Shall we have a pure judiciary? and they 
took the negative side of it, too. That showed that 
if they were magnanimous in victory they were also 
demoralized by a sense of irresponsibility. Had 
Roosevelt's election been as closely contested as, 
and his victory no greater than, Garfield's in 1880, or 
Harrison's in 1888, it would have been all the bet- 
ter for the Republican party and the country. 

And thus the asperities of politics have been im- 
measurably softened since the time that Grow of 
Pennsylvania and Keith of South Carolina had a 
fist fight on the floor of the House in open session, 
precipitated by the incident that Grow happened to 
be on the Democratic side for some purpose or other, 
and that episode had much to do in elevating Grow 
to the speakership of the Thirty-seventh Congress, 
when John Sherman preferred the senatorship va- 
cated by Chase to the speakership of the House. The 
fiercest philippic pronounced in Congress in the past 
fifty years was John Young Brown's attack on old 
Ben Butler: "If I were to characterize everything 
that is pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, for- 
bidden in morals and corrupt in politics, I'd call it 
Butlerism," but it would meet with no applause at 
the present day; Blaine's and Garfield's greatest 
speeches would be listened to with impatience ; BIng- 



161 

ham's most fervid oratory would call forth derisive 
laughter, and John A. Logan's invectives against 
treason and traitors would be hissed. 

Grow and Keith, Brown and Butler were not 
farther apart politically than are John Sharp Wil- 
liams and John Dalzell, or Champ Clark and Charles 
H. Grosvenor, who hurl Rolands and Olivers at one 
another across the main aisle in political debate, but 
who are the best of friends in private converse. We 
cannot imagine Louis T. Wigfall and Benjamin 
F. Wade, or Felix K. Zollicoffer and Owen Jovejoy 
in amiable social discourse; but Ben Tillman and 
Bill Chandler were chums, and Tillman and Spooner 
as thick as Brindle and Cherrv. 



When Tillman made his first speech in the Senate 
it was to a very large audience in the galleries and 
a very full attendance on the floor. He was herald- 
ed. He was a Tribune. He was Brutus and Rienzi. 
He was Wallace and Tell. He was a very different 
order of man from Lowndes, and Hayne, and Cal- 
houn, and McDufifie. He was not a Rhett, nor a 
Hampton, nor a Butler. He did not represent that 
splendid race, the country gentry of the old South, 
but the new order that had in troublous times grasp- 
ed power, and yet hold it. The story of that old 
South has never yet been told, and he who would tell 
it aright must be Burke and Macaulay, Scott and 
Thackeray, combined. It was my fortune to hear 
Tillman's speech, and I could but go back in memory 
to an earlier debate in that body that I had read thir- 
ty years before — when Garrett Davis of Kentucky 
addressed an oration to the Senate, the theme of 
which was of and concerning the personality, the 
character and shortcomings of Henry Wilson, then 



162 

a Senator from the State of Massachusetts and 
subsequently a Vice President of the United States. 
There was a bi^^ differences in the speeches. The 
Kentuckian thrust with a rapier. The South Caro- 
Hnian had a pitchfork. 

But Tillman has learned much and has progressed. 
As there were brave men before Agamemnon, he 
has discovered that there were honest men before 
Tillman. I do believe he is the most candid man 
who has appeared in politics since William L. Yan- 
cey, and that has gained him, as it will gain any 
other man, the respect of all parties and all sections. 

Even those who believe his dogmas are lunacies 
can but admire the man for the temerity with which 
he proclaims them, and the tenacity with which he 
maintains them. But never again will Benjamin 
R. Tillman fetch a pitchfork into the United States 
Senate. In commanding the respect of other Sena- 
tors, he has grown in his own bosom respect for 
them. If he keeps on it will not be long before 
the amenities of his speech will equal, possibly ex- 
ceed, the asperities thereof. 



Two far greater men than Tillman, two orators 
unrivaled in their day, one from Georgia and one 
from Alabama, spoke in Faneuil Hall to the genera- 
tion that fought in the great war of 1861-65, and 
Boston realized that New England had but two ora- 
tors in their class, and one of these was now a Demo- 
crat, and the 'other an impracticable, a visionary, a 
fanatic blatherskite, and it is doubtful if Boston or 
Concord, was more charmed by the oratory of 
Choate and Phillips than they were delighted by the 
splendid eloquence of Toombs and Yancey, baleful 



163 

as they thought their preachments and innocuous as 
they deemed their threats. 



For many years John J. Ingalls was the terror of 
the Senate, and the Democrats hated him even more 
than they feared him. His was a scorpion tongue 
and an exhaustless vocabulary — sarcasm and invec- 
tive were his weapons. He never convinced anybody 
and he never persuaded anybody. His argument 
was magnificent, but it was not logic. His language 
was splendid, but it was not eloquence. He was a 
parliamentary Murat, terrible in a charge after Lan- 
nes, Ney, Soult, and Davoust had gained the day. 
There is no one to doubt that Roscoe Conkling was 
a greater intellect and a greater orator than In- 
galls, and Ingalls was long in awe of him, and posi- 
tively disliked him. Thus it is with as much satis- 
faction as particularity that in some of his writings 
Ingalls relates the encounter between Lamar and 
Conkling to the confusion and disaster of the latter, 
Kansas was a Blaine state, and Ingalls was a Blaine 
man, and possibly that had something to do with his 
hostility to Conkling, whom, however, he never at- 
tacked. 

For Ingalls knew whom to kick, and that is gener- 
ally the way of your bully who uses words, as well as 
of your bully who uses fists. George G. Vest entered 
the Senate in 1879 , the day Ingalls began his second 
term, and they were fellow Senators twelve years, 
and nearly everybody expected that Ingalls would 
try to give Vest. a dressing-down. Indeed, it was 
told in Gath and whispered on the streets of Askelon 
that the Kansas terror had a rod in pickle for the 
Missouri terrier and was only awaiting opportunity 
to lay it on for the edification of the Senate. Ul- 



164 

timately he concluded to try it on Uncle Brown of 
Georgia. Vest did not seem to be afraid, and even 
sought opportunity for the engagement. It never 
came off, and for a very good reason. Vest had in 
his possession a copy of a speech Ingalls delivered 
during the war when he was a candidate for Lieut- 
enant-Governor on a bolting ticket, in which he not 
only gave utterance to political heresy in characteris- 
tic denunciations of the Republican party, but was 
guilty of flat political blasphemy in abuse of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. At that time Ingalls was seeking, and 
got, Democratic votes. The tradition is that Ingalls 
found out that Vest had a copy of that speech, and he 
never brought on the action — for his strong suit as 
a Senator was loyalty, and this speech, from his Sen- 
atorial standpoint, was the next thing to treason. It 
was long ago that this story was related to me, but 
I am satisfied that the substance of it was as I have 
tried to narrate in the foregoing. Certain it is that 
Vest gave Ingalls every opportunity to engage, and 
his provocation was never regarded. 



As a Senator Ingalls was inferior to Blaine, to 
Conkling, to Carpenter, to Thurman, to Hoar, to 
Edmunds, to Ben Hill ; but he was emphatically an 
interesting man and gifted with extraordinary pow- 
ers. He left a void in the Senate that will not soon 
be supplied. There will be many future Thurmans 
before there is one other Ingalls. 

In the earlier days there was greatly more asperity 
in Congressional debate than now. John Randolph 
of Roanoke, a much misunderstood and the most un- 
der-rated statesman of our whole parliamentary his- 
tory, lorded it over Congresses as no other man has, 
though Clay and Stevens both cracked the whip in 



165 

the House of Representatives; but Randolph was 
more than a master of withering sarcasm and fierce 
invective — he was a powerful reasoner. His speech 
opposing a war with England is one of the greatest 
Parliamentary productions of our Congress, or any 
other political assembly that ever deliberated on 
God's footstool. There is nothing in Burke that sur- 
passes it, and it is superior to the reply of Fox to 
Pitts' defense of his breach with Bonaparte about the 
treaty of Amiens . Bismarck was not ashamed to 
borrow frim this magnificent oration of the eccentric 
Virginian, and if a New Englander had made the 
speech it would be as famous as Webster's reply to 
Hayne, for it was a greater production. 



Eliminate the asperities from the Parliamentary 
career of John Quincy Adams and little would be 
left. Perhaps he made more fame in the House of 
Representatives than any other individual, unless it 
was John Randolph. Tom Marshall might have 
been as great as either had he kept sober and held a 
seat in Congress as long as either. He served but 
one term, and, though he and Adams frequently 
clashed in fierce debate, he extorted more admiration 
from Adams than any other man, unless it was 
George Evans. There is a tradition that Adams 
crushed Marshall in debate. That is not the way I 
read it. Marshall was excoriating Adams about 
that twenty-first rule, and Adams read a paper Mar- 
shall had written against slavery in Kentucky some 
years before. 

To prove your adversary inconsistent in political 
conduct is one of the weakest of arguments, and if 
it amounted to anything, it would pull down from 



166 



his pedestal almost every great man our country has 
produced. 

It would take Theodore Roosevelt down a peg, 
mayhaps two pegs. 



TWO ANTAGONISTIC IDEAS. 

Some years ago the people of North Carolina 
held a celebration commemorative of the Mecklen- 
burg Declaration of Independence, and Champ Clark 
went down to Charlotte and delivered an eloquent, 
ornate and patriotic speech, in which he took occa- 
sion to discuss the different ways the North and the 
South look on history. There is some dispute as 
to the Mecklenburg declaration : but then it is denied 
that Thomas Jefferson was the author of the dec- 
laration that the Continental Congress proclaimed 
July 4, 1776. It is claimed that an American school- 
boy wrote the "Charge of the Light Brigade" and 
sent it to Tennyson, who stole the sentiment and 
much of the verse. It would be impossible to con- 
vince a North Carolinian that there was no Meck- 
lenburg declaration, and for all material as well as 
for all sentimental purposes the declaration at Meck- 
lenburg exists, and is immortal in the Carolinas 
and in the Southern States that are their daughters. 

Mr. Clark cited in his speech how careful Mas- 
sachusetts is to preserve every little dab of history 
that can possibly augment her renown, while at the 
South there is small disposition to save great big 
chunks of history that would add to the glory of that 
section. With the possible exception of New York, 
there was more blood shed in South Carolina for 
our independence than in any other colony, and 



167 



yet the consensus of impression in the United States 
is that Massachusetts conquered our hberty in two 
or three skirmishes around Boston, while the fact 
is there was more patriot blood shed in a single 
battle in South Carolina than in all New England 
during the entire seven years of war. 



Everybody everywhere has heard of Israel Put- 
nam; it is only at the South that Francis Marion 
is a hero. Every survivor of the men Putnam led 
got on the pension roll ; you will not find there, nor 
on the roll Secretary of War Knox made, the names 
of Marion's men. Bunker Hill was an American de- 
feat, and there is a monument there; Kings Moun- 
tain was the most brilliant American victory of 
the entire war of Independence, gained by the militia 
of Virginia and the Carolinas. but who would have 
the effrontery to put Kings Mountain beside Bunker 
Hill ? A distinguished United States Senator, from 
New England, until late in life, thought George 
Rogers Clark was the Clark who made the expedi- 
tion to the Northwest with Lewis. Now, George 
Rogers Clark was one of the greatest men our coun- 
try or any other country ever produced. Had he 
been a New Englander, his name would have been 
as historic as John Hancock's, for he was a greater 
man than New England has yet produced, and did 
more for his country. I have heard that it was with 
money gained in the African slave trade that Peter 
Faneuil was enabled to provide Boston with "The 
Cradle of Liberty." 

What I am trying to emphasize is this — the bulk 
of the American history that has been writ makes 
the impression that New England gained our in- 



168 

dependence, founded our political system, and is the 
butt-cut of American character and the upper crust 
of American intelligence. I have no quarrel with 
New England because of that impression that she 
has created and fostered. I do have quarrel with 
that stupidity of American citizenship that accepts 
it as truth and believes it. 



Leaving the Mecklenburg declaration out of the 
account, the first heart to feel the spirit of indepen- 
dence on this hemisphere pulsated in the bosom of 
Patrick Henry, and his was the first voice to pro- 
claim it. Jefferson's pen vitalized the fundamental 
truth that Henry's tongue had uttered, and Wash- 
ington's sword achieved it. And then, when the 
battle was over, the victory won, independence gain- 
ed, liberty secured, it was the thought of Virginia 
that dominated the convention that formed the Con- 
stitution of the United States. Mason and Madison 
were the exemplars of Virginia opinion, and their 
fundamental ideas prevail in every State constitu- 
tion between the Appalachian chain and the Pacific 
Ocean. That rude and hardy population that went 
from Virginia and settled in the Ohio Valley and 
made Ohio and Kentucky and their sisters of what 
is now come to be called the Middle West what 
they are, carried with them the political polities that 
flourished in Virginia and was crystallized into 
the "American system." Those adventurous spirits 
were not collegiates ; they knew nothing of Latin and 
Greek; they could not have sounded the profundi- 
ties of an Emerson, and they would have contemned 
the sentimentalities of a Whittier ; but as State build- 
ers, as constitution makers, as trustees of liberty, 
they were the salt of the earth, the foremost race 



169 

of men this or any other country ever saw. They 
were swift to the battle, slow to the pension roll. 
They or their fathers had gained Kings Mountain 
and forced the surrender at Yorktown, and now 
they were carrying westward the star of empire and 
planting the tree of liberty in the wilderness. 

That is the truth of history ; but the fiction of it is 
that New England made the Middle West — that is, 
what is tolerable of it. Thackeray is about the only 
^an of letters from abroad who saw the fiction as 
it was. He went up and down the Mississippi on 
a steamboat, and he soon discovered where the nar- 
row of the country was located and whence it came. 
The average foreigner who comes over here, gets 
no conception of the truth. When he goes home 
he tells them that Boston is cultured and New York 
rich — perhaps he says, in confidence, that both are 
vulgar — and that is all he knows about it. 

So far as my poor information goes I am led to 
believe that the chief exploits of New England in 
the convention that formed the Constitution of the 
United States, was the forcing into that sacred in- 
strument the right of the merchant marine of New 
England to continue the African slave trade until 
1808, and the best-remembered speech Roger Sher- 
man made in the convention is that where he favored 
clause 3, section 2, article 1, in which he argued that 
it was as proper to apprehend and return to his 
master a runaway negro as it was to catch and return 
to its owner an estrayed horse. The late John James 
Ingalls declared that the wickedness of African slav- 
ery at the South was not made manifest to the aboli- 
tionist of the North until it was obvious that slavery 
could not be made profitable in New England. If 



170 

African slavery had been as profitable in Massachu- 
setts, Ohio and Iowa as it was supposed to be in 
Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, African slavery 
would be in the green tree in this glorious Republic 
right now. All of us are reformers if the victims of 
our reforms can be made to foot the bills. 

I am not saying anything in reproach of New 
England ; I am only trying to straighten out some 
shackling history. Champ Clark advises the South 
to turn historian, but I object to the South dropping 
into narrative unless she has got the great, the pre- 
cious, the priceless gift of truthful speech, and has 
learned to tell an unvarnished tale, naught extenua- 
ting and setting naught down in malice. All other 
history is not only vicious, but worthless. Your 
historian should be one who 

"Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph; 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better: 
Sleep to wake." 

Be sure the truth will find a way. Fact will not 
be denied, for truth is stronger than error and must 
prevail in the end, false history may live long and 
prosper, but it is mortal and must finally die. 



The Virginia Idea prevailed for three-score and 
ten years of our national history. It is comprehend- 
ed in the term individualism — that the government 
was made for the citizen and not the citizen for the 
government. Or we may put it this way — the gov- 
ernment is a convenience and not a providence. Or 
we may say the government is a servant, not a mas- 
ter. And the Virginia idea is thoroughly compre- 
hended in the declaration : The Federal establish- 



171 

ment shall do nothing the State can do; the State 
shall do nothing the county can do ; the county shall 
do nothing the individual can do. This we call home 
rule, and it is a principle of government that the 
more remote power is from the people the more 
irresponsible it is and the more liable the administra- 
tion to corrupt influences. 

In 1861 the opposing idea supplanted the Virginia 
idea. We may call this collectivism, and it has dom- 
inated in the administration for nearly half a cen- 
tury. It was never so active, never so robust, never 
so virulent as now. It is the mother of privilege, 
and privilege is the mother of corruption. It is 
everywhere. Whenever the citizen stumps his toe 
he shows it to Congress and demands that Congress 
shall poultice it. It is flagrant in the tariff; it is 
glaring on the pension roll; it is in every general 
appropriation ; it is out yonder in the Philippines ; it 
is down yonder at Panama ; it is the vital principle 
of monopoly, and without it the beef trust could 
not have perpetrated its revolting and horrible iniqui- 
ties. It is in Carnegie's charities, and it lurks in 
young Rockefeller's Sunday school. It has separated 
the American people into classes — the privileged 
and the subject— for if I must take of my earning to 
protest somebody who makes hats, what am I but the 
man's slave, to the extent of the "protection" the 
government authorizes him to extort of me ? He is 
privileged, for the government has laid on me a 
tax that it never intended to collect for the Treasury, 
but required that I should pay to the hat maker. 

No wonder the country is reeking in graft. If 
the government by law makes the manufacturer a 
tax-eater, why shall not a railroad also indulge in 
corruption? Here are certain insurance companies 



372 

dealing in elections. They convert the trust funds of 
their policy holders into boodle funds of the party 
in power, with which to corrupt the electorate. 
Why, a volume would be required to catalogue the 
graft that is rampant everywhere. 

Talk about cleansing it ! It will be cleansed when 
this government abandons the idea of collectivism 
and returns to the idea of individualism, and not 
until then. As well attempt to plow up hell with a 
pine shingle, else. 



JEREMIAH SULLIVAN BLACK. 

This man was the leader of the American bar, the 
position that Pinkney gained and made illustrious. 
Taney, Chase and Waite all leaned on Jeremiah S. 
Black, and he was a splendid, a massive pillar of 
justice. He mastered the science of the law and 
contributed immensely to the growth of that science. 
He understood the art of the profession, also, and 
penetrated it with a keener perception than Aaron 
Burr or Ben Butler, who were incapable of com- 
prehending the science of it. The philosophy of 
Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence was a simple problem to 
his gigantic understanding, and he traced it back to 
its source, which is a proper conception of the dif- 
ference between meum and tuum, might and right, 
dogma and doctrine, Egpyt and Canaan, Haman and 
Mordecai . No man born of woman — not even 
Socrates — had a profounder veneration for the law. 
He looked on it as sustaining to the state the relation 
air, blood and food bear to he physical man, and in 
his esteem obedience to the law is the highest duty 



173 

of the citizen, and the enforcement of the law the 
supremest duty of the government. 

He was fond of expounding that the government 
of the United States is the Constitution and he 
laws, and nothing else, and he had only the bitterest 
scorn and implacable hatred for what was known as 
the "higher law," which he held to be both treason 
and anarchy. One of the finest productions of the 
English tongue is his open letter in criticism and 
denunciation of Charles Francis Adams' paper on 
William H. Seward. It is a classic, and even Henry 
Cabot Lodge, who admires Seward so extravagantly, 
might read it with profit for its excellent principles, 
and with delight for its splendid style. There is 
nothing left of Seward but the ruins of what was 
error and evil when Black is done with him. 



John Marshall our greatest judge thought Pink- 
ney our greatest lawyer. Webster thought Jeremiah 
Mason was more than Pinkney's equal, and there 
were good judges who thought Webster the su- 
perior of either of them. There was a time when 
Charles O'Conor was the head of the New York 
bar, and it is doubtful if our country has produced 
his superior, though Samuel J. Tilden was his equal. 
On form, to employ the term of the race track, Wil- 
liam M. Evarts is first among American lawyers. 
He was the most conspicuous of the cloth in the cele- 
brated Beecher-Tilton trial. He was the leading 
counsel of Andy Johnson in the impeachment pro- 
ceedings. He made the chief plea for Hayes before 
the electoral commission. He conducted the cause 
of the United States when the issue of peace or war 
was arbitrated at Geneva. Mr. Justice Miller 



174 

thought Judge Black the greatest lawyer who ap- 
peared before the Supreme Court in his day, and 
Miller was the ablest judge on the bench every day 
he was a member of the Supreme Court, after the 
death of Taney. Black himself believed that Matthew 
H. Carpenter was the foremost lawyer at the Ameri- 
can bar, and it was his opinion that Carpenter had 
not reached his zenith when death all too soon cut 
short that splendid career. 

Pinkney and Carpenter were magnificent popular 
orators, as well as profound lawyers. They charmed 
as well as instructed, persuaded as well as con- 
vinced. It is doubtful if, in the capacity and the 
art to rivet attention, and command the admiration 
of his audience, the American Senate ever knew Car- 
penter's superior, and, for fifty years, it has not seen 
his equal. Black was not a popular orator — that is, 
he had not the voice, the graces, the arts of the stump 
speaker. Black was a great orator, for the weight 
of what he said, and the splendid fashion he had of 
giving expression to his profound thought. When 
he got through with a sentence of the English lan- 
guage it was finished, and even his exclusively legal 
arguments are a perpetual delight to the layman. 
Not so with Evarts. The writer of this frequently 
heard him in the Senate and in the Supreme Court, 
and was never quite certain that he was talking Eng- 
lish. Take one of his speeches and compare it with 
one of John G. Carlisle's and you have all the differ- 
ence between ornament and simplicity; between os- 
tentation and strength ; but the judges understood 
Mr. Evarts whatever tongue he spoke. 

Jeremiah Sullivan Black was born January 10, 
1810, in Somerset County, Pa. He was Irish and 



175 

Scotch-Irish, and even when he had come to be a 
sage he was yet a poet. Like the man he loved so 
abundantly. Matt Carpenter, he was a "lazy boy" — 
so called by their fellows, blind to genius — and 
loved a book and his own thought better than he 
loved physical toil and the discourse of the vulgar 
herd. There was another similarity in their history 
— each married his first sweetheart, and in the case 
of each she was the daughter of her husband's 
perceptor in the law. Black had little confidence 
in his own capacity, and never w^as there a more 
astonished youth in Pennsylvania than he when his 
future father-in-law, who had been once elected to 
Congress, hastened his admission to the bar, and 
intrusted to this boy all the legal business of his 
office. That was in 1830, and now this youth of 
twenty was in charge of an extensive practice, and 
contended at the bar with some of the giants of 
the profession in a State then and ever famous for 
great lawyers. 

The father of Judge Black was a Whig, and his 
party nominated the old gentleman for Congress 
when the democracy of that electorate had resolved 
to nominate the son for that office. Of ocurse, the 
young man declined, and it is possible that the 
nomination of his father was the means of depriving 
him of a great political career. He was never a 
member of either House of Congress, and was in 
no sense a politician. The late Donn Piatt extrava- 
gantly admired him, and used to advise the Demo- 
crats to bring Judge Black into the National House 
of Representatives for the one end of getting rid 
of old Ben Butler. It was Piatt's opinion that Butler 
would resign the day he heard of Black's election, 
and he related with much glee how Black sometimes 



176 

overwhelmed Butler in arguments before the Su- 
preme Court. Though he was unequaled as a politi- 
cal disputant — a greater Junius — the only political 
office he ever held was as a member of Buchanan's 
Cabinet. 

When a little over thirty Judge Black was ap- 
pointed to the Common Pleas bench, and afterward 
he was a member of the State Supreme Court. He 
was a great judge — learned, fearless and just, and 
when he retired from the bench he bade it farewell 
in the words of Samuel as he left off judging Israel : 
"Whose ox have I taken? Whose ass have I taken? 
Whom have I defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed, 
or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind 
mine eyes therewith ? and I will restore it unto you. 
And they said, 'Thou hast not defrauded nor op- 
pressed us ; neither hast thou taken ought of any 
man's hand.' " 



James Buchanan had followed Black's career on 
the bench and discerned the great jurist in the young 
judge from the backwoods of Pennsylvania, and in 
1857 President Buchanan, without consulting Black, 
nominated him for the Cabinet as Attorney-General. 
It was with many misgivings that Black accepted, 
and he made his debut in the Supreme Court soon 
thereatfer. He appeared with fear and trembling, for 
he was always unconscious of his strength. He was 
a stranger at that bar and to that bench, and though 
there was curiosity to hear the new Attorney-Gen- 
eral, little was expected of him. It was a land claim 
from California, and Black had mastered the issue 
at a glance. He had not been speaking five minutes 
before the bench and bar were all attention. His was 
a new style, as brilliant as it was logical, and for a 



177 

quarter of a century after that occasion Jeremiah S. 
Black was without a superior and almost without an 
equal or a rival in that presence. 

Soon there were stormy times. A generation that 
knew not Joseph peopled the land. An exclusively 
sectional political party promised to sway the repub- 
lic and establish the "higher law." Never had an 
American Cabinet been confronted with such grave 
problems, and the dominant personalities of that 
administration were James Buchanan and Jeremiah 
S. Black. That administration has been the victim of 
more slander than all the others of our history. More 
lies were told about it than would suffice to sink 
Nelson's fleet. Its day has about come and its 
vindication. It stood for the Constitution and the 
law. Has it ever struck you that Lincoln's admin- 
istration did not change Buchanan's policy one iota, 
except to grab the offices, until Fort Sumter was 
fired on? Just think about that. How is that 
for vindication ? 

I do not believe that five-score Republicans could 
be mustered in the whole Union who ever read Jerry 
Black's open letters to Charles Francis Adams on 
Seward and to Henry Wilson on Stanton. 



There is nothing in Junius to compare with these 
letters in style, in learning, in rhetoric, in force, or 
even in sarcasm and invective. As arguments, they 
are simply overwhelming; as English compositions, 
they are priceless classics. No young man, whatever 
his politics, who expects to edit a newspaper or go 
to Congress can afford to neglect the reading of those 
papers. 

And then there is E. W. Stoughton — poor 
Stoughton — whom Black crucifies and scarifies and 



178 

cauterizes in a hundred different ways, blistering him 
with contempt and immersing- him in ridicule. There 
was never anything like it in these parts. Adams 
was carved like Brutus wanted Caesar served; but 
for Wilson and Stoughton, Black had the bludgeon, 
and he beat, bruised, mangled them, and perhaps 
he did so because that was the only way of reason- 
ing it they could understand. 

In his article Wilson went on in an artless way 
to relate certain conduct of Edwin M. Stanton that, 
if true, stamped the great War Minister as one of the 
most consummate scoundrels in all history; but, in 
blissful ignorance of the logic of the case, Wilson 
imputed the conduct to Stanton for patriotism. 
Black seized on the moral obliquity of the argument 
and fairly blistered Wilson, who called to his aid 
about half a score of Senators, and the gang wrote 
a big paper proving Stanton guilty of everything 
that was base, and at the same time lauding his con- 
duct as the most exalted patriotism and as stern 
civic virtue as Roman ever practiced. 

And now Black again took up the pen and gave 
those gentlemen a lesson in morality and ethics and 
virtue. He was ten times as severe as in the first 
paper, and when he finished the debate was closed. 
There was nothing more to say. "The Alps and the 
Pyrenees sank before him." 

Black loved Garfield like a son. They had been 
associated in the argument of the Milligan case. 
They were members of the same church. Their 
literary tastes were the same. Both were admirable 
conversationalists, but politically they were as far 
apart at the poles. Garfield made a speech on the 
two political parties, in which he was foolish enough 



179 

to trace all American liberty back to Plymouth 
Rock, where, he contended, political and religious 
liberty was born. He was unfortunate enough to 
send the speech to Black, who made a reply, in 
which he undertook to teach the future President 
some American history. The Pequod wars, the at- 
tempt to enslave that tribe, the African slave trade, 
the persecution of Quakers, the banishment of Bap- 
tists, and all that were dwelt on by Black in charac- 
teristic vein, but the author wrote as though it was 
more a duty than a pleasure — he did not revel in it 
as he did in his letters to Adams, Wilson and 
Stoughton. 

When he retired from the Cabinet and was again 
a private citizen. Judge Black was a poor man, and 
doubtful if he could make a living practicing law. 
He was convinced that he could not make enough to 
live in Washington, and it was in 1861 that he 
rented a house at York, Pa., and there began again 
a struggle with poverty; but if Black did not know 
his own powers, the American bar did, and in a 
little while he resigned his office of reporter of 
the Supreme Court to give liis whole time to his 
large practice. He was now the leader of the 
American bar, and before long he had acquired a 
competency and was rich far beyond his expecta- 
tions. Had he loved money, had wealth been his 
object, he would have made millions. But in a long 
life he never got a dollar to hide in a hedge or for a 
train attendant. 



But he was a son of the soil, and passionately 
loved agriculture. When he got the means he bought 
a farm in the beautiful Codorus Valley and he was 
little concerned about the price, but solicitous that 



180 

some of the land should be poor in order that he 
might improve it. He made large crops, but at 
frightful cost, and his farming made as serious in- 
roads on his cash as Horace Greeley's up in West- 
chester County. 

Here at "Brockie" the great lawyer lived his most 
contented days. Here in the company of his wife, 
children and grandchildren he was a happy man. It 
is delightful to read how he would draw up a lease 
of a plat which his little grandson was to cultivate, 
and we are told that his entertainment of friends 
on the porch at "Brockie" was "sometimes interrupt- 
ed by the arrival of a small wheelbarrow load of 
very shabby vegetables, brought by a young gardner 
of four or five to sell to 'Poddy,' who had generally, 
after feeling in large but empty pockets, to borrow 
the money to pay the exorbitant price asked for 
them; a great deal of delightful sham barter going 
on the while — the whole business always terminating 
with hugs and kisses between buyer and seller." 



When a young man Judge Black went to Bethany 
and sat for days at the feet of Alexander Camp- 
bell to hear the story of the Gospel. He was con- 
verted, and the greatest preacher of America bap- 
tized the greatest lawyer of America and received 
him into the church. 

He lived the life and died the death of a Chris- 
tian. The end came to him in 1883, when he was 
past three score and full of honors. He was at the 
head of the bar, as Napoleon was the head of the 
army. 



181 



OLD AND NEW SPAIN. 



It was a popular and discerning American author 
who made the remark, "You may dwarf a man to 
the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he 
will put out green leaves ;" and so with nations, and 
Spain, for example. More than four centuries ago, 
when the heroic Moor had been expelled from Anda- 
lusia before the shining lance and trenchant blade 
of Castilian chivalry, Spain rose to be the first power 
not only of Christendom, but of the entire world, 
and the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella became 
the most powerful monarch with whom history 
dealt between Charlemagne and Napoleon. In ad- 
dition to the peninsular, the most puissant of the then 
kingdoms, he was dominant in Italy and sovereign of 
a great part of what is now France. All the Nether- 
lands owned him for master, nearly all the Americas, 
then subdued to the Caucasian, were his. He had 
possessions in the Far East also, and fortune, with 
both hands running over, put upon his brow the 
diadem of the modern Caesar. He was the first 
monarch who could boast, "The sun never sets on 
my dominions." 

Charles V was the first personality of an age 
prodigal in the production of extraordinary men — 
Francis I, Henry VIII Solyman the Magnificent, the 
Constable Bourbon, Cardinal Wolsey, Martin Lu- 
ther, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, William the 
Silent, Andrea Doria and many others. Don John 
of Austria was his son with the bar sinister, and 
Alexander Farnese was the son of his daughter with 
the bar sinister. Alva was his captain, though Bour- 
bon, driven from France by a fatuous king and a 
voluptuous dowager, commanded for him in one of 



182 

his greatest battles, and the one that proved decidedly 
the most fruitful of his victories. His army was the 
bravest in the world, fashioned in the school of 
Gonsalvo di Cordova, El Gran Capitan. At Le- 
panto, when Philip II had succeeded his father, Spain 
overthrew the Turk in one of the greatest, perhaps 
the very greatest, sea fights between Actium and the 
destruction of the invincible Armada. Not only 
was the Spain of Charles' reign first in arms, but she 
led in statecraft, in letters and in art. Cervantes, 
perhaps the nearest to Shakespeare of all profane 
literary geniuses, was a stout combatant at Lepanto. 



Philip II inherited all his father's dominions, and 
all his dignities, except the imperial crown of Ger- 
many. He had at command what was easily four- 
fifths of the wealth of the world. His armies were 
invincible, and led by the first captains of the age — 
Don John, Farnese and Em.anuel Phillibert, the 
princely Savoyard, who brought France to defeat 
and humiliation, but whose victory was subsequently 
reduced to naught, and whose fame was subsequently 
eclipsed by Francis of Guise. Not content with 
his inherited power, Philip took for wife the Queen 
of England, and upon her demise he had for consort 
a daughter of France, sister of three several kings 
of that realm. 

At St. Ouentin the power of Spain attained to the 
zenith. It was now that her statesmanship became 
stolid and fatuous. All the genius of all the 
world conspiring together could scarce have devised 
a governmental policy more harmful and more 
degenerate than that which cursed Spain for more 
than three centuries. The king was absolute, and as- 
sumed to be master of the persons, the estates, the 



183 

minds and the consciences of his subjects, and yet 
this was Spain, the inventor of the very soul of 
modern padiameritary government. Descended from 
the Visigoths who wrought so destructively for the 
overthrow of Roman civilization, there was a liberty 
in that land that even the crafty and the conscience- 
less Ferdinand himself could not pollute, and even 
Charles V, was necessitated to humiliate himself 
before and beg supplies from the Cortes, the first 
of modern parliaments. 



As if fate was bent on his destruction Philip must 
needs drive the Netherlands to revolt, the most opu- 
lent, and the day of his coronation, the mogt loyal of 
his subjects. Of that Batavian race that Julius 
Caesar himself absorbed because he could not con- 
quer it, for more than forty years the Netherlands 
strove for their liberties against the bravest armies, 
captained by the most consummate generals of that 
heroic age. Our revolutionary struggle was a May 
day festival in comparison to that William the Silent 
maintained against Philip II. 

England, Huguenot France, and thousands in 
Germany lent aid to heroic little Holland, and finally 
Philip put the world as a stake and sent his Armada 
against England, whose sovereignty he claimed as the 
heir of his first Queen. What man with Anglo-Saxon 
for race but his blood stirs when reading of that scene 
where Elizabeth mustered her nobility, her gentry, 
and her yeomanry at Tilbury, and reviewed them 
mounted on her palfrey, like another Semiramis! 
Catholic English were as sternly determined and as 
eager for the issue as Protestant, and all England, 
Catholic and Protestant, was resolved to die rather 
than own the Spaniard for master. Farnese was 



184 

on the other shore, at the head of the finest army- 
then on the planet, waiting for the Armada to con- 
vey his transports to the British Isles ; but the young 
navy of England, under Howard, Drake and Fro- 
bisher, met the enemy, defeated him, and the storm 
of ocean did the rest. Had Farnese landed the last 
half of the sixteenth century, or had Napoleon landed 
the first half of the eighteenth century, on English 
soil, the history of the world might have radically 
differed from what it is. 



After the death of Philip, Spain went from bad to 
worse. There appeared to remain nothing but her 
pride and her chivalry. A picture of the government 
and of the people is found in the chapters of that 
delightfully fascinating romance, "Gil Bias." There 
misrule is described in all its gloom, impotent in 
everything except courage and corruption. And 
yet Spain was grand, even in her degradation. Eng- 
land sought her alliance, and the mighty spirit of 
Spain survived to tame the great nations that sup- 
planted her long after her power was undermined, 
just as the mother of the East quieted her child with 
"A Richard of England will get you" long after 
Richard had served as supper for worms, with old 
Polonius. 

And yet Spain was formidable, even in her 
decrepitude and her prostration. In two great wars 
she was prominent, and in one she saved Europe. 
The easiest of all countries to overrun, she was 
never subdued. In the great war of the Succession, 
Marlborough and Eugene defeated France in 
numerous great battles, and the kingdom of Louis 
the Great was rended on the Rhine border; but a 
grandson of Louis was maintained on the throne 



185 

at Madrid by the valor and the prowess of Spanish 
guerrillas, who came to the support of Berwick and 
Vendome, the commanders of the French armies in 
the peninsula, and lent them victory, resulting in 
the expulsion of the allied English and Austrians 
from the Peninsular. 



Nor is it too much to say that Napoleon got his 
fatal wound in Spain. He had put his brother on 
the throne, just as Louis had given the Spanish 
crown to his grandson; but Spain would have none 
of Joseph, and so she welcomed Wellington. Had 
Spain accepted the King the Corsican gave her, the 
veterans under Soult, Junot, Massena, Marmont, 
Lannes and Ney, who found bloody graves in Spain, 
might have been children of victory again in 
Germany and thus saved the empire of the latest 
Caesar. If Spain had not aided him, Wellington 
could not more have expelled the French from the 
Peninsula than Stanhope did 100 years earlier. 

It is a common belief that Napoleon's marshals 
were great generals, and so they were, under his 
eye. He said at St. Helena that of all the captains 
under his command, Desaix and Kleber were the 
ablest. Both died the same day — the first in battle 
at Marengo and the second by the hands of an 
assassin in Egypt. Lannes and Massena were, 
perhaps, the ablest of the others, but the first never 
had an important independent command. Massena 
was victor at Zurich and the defender at Genoa. Ney 
was fit for nothing but a brilliant charge and a stub- 
born retreat, and Napoleon declared he should never 
have risen above the rank of general of division. 
Murat was only a trooper, superb for dash and en- 
thusiasm, and was what his master called him, a 



186 

"brilliant ass." Devoust was a hero and a victor in a 
battle where nothing told but stubborn courage. That 
same day his master, only a few miles away, gained 
one of his greatest victories by the exercise of his 
matchless genius for war. Macdonald might have 
saved the crown at Lutzen had the other marshals 
supported him. There are those who think Saint 
Cyr the ablest of the marshals, but he would not 
flatter, and the Emperor distrusted him. 

But every one of them was incapable except 
under he eye of his master. It is sickening to 
read in the pages of Marbot the petty jealousies of 
these heroes in Spain, where they would have 
overthrown Wellington had they acted in concert. 
If Massena had caused a platoon to shoot Ney, he 
might have saved Spain for Napoleon. The trouble 
was that every devil of them thought that he, and 
he only, was next best general to the Emperor. 
Napoleon was never well served by his generals 
except when he himself was present or near by. 



But there are indications that Spain "is putting 
out green leaves." The government is beginning 
to be efficient, and wlnt is better to the purpose, it 
is become honest. Having lost her patrimony, 
Spain has gone to work for a living. It is said 
the capital is to be changed from Madrid to 
Barcelona, and that the Escurial is to be abandoned, 
an acropolis and a memory of the Spain that began 
to die with its erection and was centuries expiring. 
That Spain is now dead and we have a new Spain. 

Barcelona is a progressive city, modern and a 
center of industry. As busy as the average American 
town, the music of her anvils and the cadence of 
her looms promise a renaissance of a people as 



187 

interesting as any in history. It is a splendid race 
and a land of poetry, of romance, of heroic 
achivements, of historic memories, reaching back 
before Hannibal and the Scipios. It was the most 
valuable province of Rome, and the first to revive 
the literature of Europe after the dark ages. The 
natural resources of Spain are exceedingly rich. The 
iron is equal to any in the world, if not superior, 
for out of it was fashioned the Toledo blade that 
smote against the scimetars of the Berber chivalry. 
Corn, wine and oil, milk and honey are abundant and 
unsurpassed. Honor was too oft soiled with 
cruelty, but the Spanish grandee lives in the story 
of mankind as a type of nobility never surpassed 
by the choicest of other peoples. 



It is not very edifying to an American to 
contemplate our "war" of 1898. There was no 
glory in it, except that the navy discovered that it 
was worthy of the admiration of all who had read 
of Jones, of Preble, of Decatur, of Chauncery, of 
Perry, of MacDonough, of Bainbridge, of Stewart, 
of Porter, of Hull, of Lawrence, and the others that 
gathered so much of glory for that arm of the 
service. 

But Spain unloaded the Philippines on us. No 
doubt we shall govern them better than Spain, but 
what may they not do for us ? 



BRODERICK. 

This man was the William Goebel of the Pacific 
Coast, and his political career in California was 
the political career of Goebel in Kentucky forty 



188 

years later. One was Irish, the other German ; both 
were exceptionally strong and stalwart men. Both 
were unscrupulous and utterly callous to the rights 
of others; Broderick ruled by fierce outbursts of 
imperious command ; Goebel got and held sway more 
by finesse. The Irishman, turbulent, fierce, domi- 
neering, dictatorial, was yet a man of magnetism, 
and held his friends by hooks of steel ; the German, 
cold, forbidding, gloomy, taciturn, was unattractive, 
and yet by some sort of mysterious paradox of 
human nature, men delighted to do his bidding. 
Both were ambitious and ready to shed blood for 
power, and strong as they were, both were filled 
with vanity and eager for a world's applause. Both 
loved money — Broderick, because it would buy him 
political preferment, and Goebel, because it was a 
source of power. Both acquired money; Broderick 
spent his, Goebel kept his. Neither cared a rap for 
principle, neither had the faintest conception of the 
import of the word, and yet both so managed that 
their followers held each as a martyr to a cause. 
Both were temperate in their habits, eschewing 
alcohol and narcotics. Broderick, after being a 
pro-slavery Democrat in New York, was an anti- 
slavery Democrat in California; Goebel, a gold 
Democrat in 1896, became the leader of the 
Bryanites in 1899. Broderick forced the legislature 
to proceed to ballot for United States Senator a 
year before the accustomed and legal date, but he 
did it by law; Goebel outraged every principle of 
self-government in the music hall convention, and 
did it not only without law, but in defiance of law. 
Both died at forty. Both went to bloody graves, as 
was inevitable, their lives being what they were. 



189 

David C. Broderick was born of Irish parents at 
Washington, D. C, in 1820. His father was a 
stonecutter, and his cunning helped to fashion the 
massive columns which support and adorn the east 
front of the National Capitol. When he was a child 
his father moved to New York, and there the boy- 
grew into politics from the streets. He was a 
volunteer fireman, lithe, athletic, combative, and 
before he was twenty he was the best man in his 
company, and an active politician. Not a great 
while later he was a Tammanyite, a "Loco-foco," 
and a "Hunker." His friend and monitor was the 
notorious George Wilkes. He belonged to Capt. 
Rynder's Empire Club, and supported the Marcy 
faction in State politics. In those days a shoulder 
hitter like Tom Hyer was of more value to a 
political party in New York city than an orator like 
John R. Fellows. Broderick was never an orator, 
but he was a shoulder hitter of magnificent strength 
and desperate courage. Soon he was a leader. 

In 1844 he was the Tammany candidate for 
Congress, and was beaten by his Whig competitor, 
but it took a Tal'madge to do it and all the power, 
wealth and aristocracy the family could boast. 
Stung by his defeat, Broderick became a forty-niner 
in California. 



He went to California with a single resolve, and 
that to return to New York a Senator in Congress. 
No miser ever sought gold more assiduously, no 
lover ever courted mistress more ardently, no hero 
ever went to battle more resolutely, no spider ever 
wove web more persistently, no bullodg ever clung 
to victim more tenaciously. Here is his own 
language : "I tell you, sir, by G — d, that for one 



190 

hour's seat in the Senate of the United States I 
would roast before a slow fire in the plaza. * * * 
Ah, yes, I know these friends ! I am going to that 
Senate. I'll go if I have to march over a thousand 
corpses, and every corpse a friend!" 

He never smiled. Though Irish to the marrow, he 
had no sense of humor — neither did Goebel ; but 
Goebel was a Hessian — Broderick was one of the 
strongest of men with a single purpose, and every 
day he worked and every night he dreamed and 
every hour brought him nearer the goal, for 
victory came at last, and all things considered, it 
was one of the greatest personal triumphs in the 
annals of American politics. He was no Douglas 
to convince, no Clay to persuade, no Corwin to 
entertain, no Marshall to dazzle, no Breckinridge to 
charm. He was no scholar, no student. He was a 
strong man, robust of health, athletic of muscle, 
imperious of will, consumed by ambition for 
distinction, and devoured by lust of power. 



It was the very community for him — that 
California of the Argonauts — Gwin, Bigler, Fre- 
mont, Crittenden, Coffroth, McCorkle, Baker, 
Crabbe, Marshall, Scott, Latham, Conness, Mc- 
Dougall, Mahoney, Selover, Weller, Worthington, 
Foote, Estill, McKibben, Colten, Butler, Maguire 
and a hundred others, including David S. Terry. 
From the day California became a State Broderick 
and Gwin were rivals. The latter was a Tennesseean 
and had been a member of Congress from Missis- 
sippi. He was a little less remarkable man than 
the Irishman, equally fearless and more adroit. It is 
a notable fact that many Californians from the 
South were partisans of Broderick, while many 



191 

from the North supported Gwin. If Broderick was 
more intense than his rival, Gwin was more discreet 
than Broderick. If Broderick was more of the 
lion, Gwin was more of the fox. 

For long years these two were rivals for the 
supremacy in the Democratic party, and with all his 
strength of character and all his arrogance of will, 
Broderick was repeatedly beaten. The governor — 
Bigler — belonged to him, but Weller got the 
Senatorship Broderick had marked for his own. 
x^gain, when he thought that the game was in his 
hands the Know-Nothings carried the legislature, 
but wasted their victory in an undecisive struggle 
between Ed. Marshall and Henry S. Foote for the 
Senatorship, which left a vacancy. Again, when 
there were two 'Senators to elect, Broderick prac- 
ticed a piece of Goebelism worthy Goebel's music 
hall convention — he dictated that the long term, 
that was not to begin for two years, should be 
filled first, though the other term was to begin 
immediately. As soon as he jammed that outrage 
through the legislature he had himself elected to the 
long term and then proceeded to sell the short term — 
not for gold — all the coin of all the mints of all 
the world would not have bought it — but for power. 
He found a purchaser; and whom do you think it 
was ? Gwin, of all men in the world, and the famous 
"scarlet letter" was the bill of sale. The "scarlet 
letter" abdicated all Senatroial power over patron- 
age. Broderick was to name every official, and that 
was the frightful price the fox paid the lion to be his 
colleague. Biit. there was an old man in Washington 
City — then President of the United States— and, 
however much we may differ about his patriotism, 
or his wisdom, nobody can impugn his honesty — 



192 

Buchanan took such measures as to nullify the 
"scarlet letter." 



Broderick fiercely assailed Pierce's administration 
because Gwin, a Senator, controlled the patronage. 
He denounced Stephen A. Douglas with charac- 
teristic bitterness for the compromise of 1850, 
though it was transparent that his real grievance 
against the "Little Giant" was that he was the prop 
of the administration in the Senate. And now 
Broderick was the leading Senator and sole purveyor 
of office in California. Buchanan knew all about 
office. He had been in both Houses of Congress, 
in the Cabinet and in the diplomatic service. He 
was known as "Old Public Functionary." When 
he became President he made an order that yet 
maintains. It was that when a member of either 
House of Congress recommended a man for office, 
he must do it in writing, to be filed in the department 
to which the office sought was attached. The day 
that order was promulgated Broderick became the 
relentless enemy of the President and the administra- 
iton. He made a speech in the Senate that was 
the fiercest assault on a President that body had 
ever heard. The gossip was that the speech was 
the composition of George Wilkes, whom Broderick 
had driven out of California for securing an office 
from Gov. Bigler which Broderick had promised 
to another, but the two were again friends, and as 
Broderick had been lion to Gwin's fox, he was again 
shark to this pilot fish. 

It was surmised that Broderick's objection to the 
executive order — that was made without any 
thought of Broderick — was that he had hypothecated 
the collectorship of San Francisco some two or 



193 

three times in order to get control of the legislature. 
A man who would roast over a slow fire on the plaza 
for the Senatorship, or kill a thousand friends to 
get it, would not hesitate to promise an office to Tom, 
Dick and Harry for it. That, it is probable, is what 
Broderick had done, and hence his rage when "Old 
Buck" made the order putting him and all like him 
on record, to the relief and the security of his and 
future administrations, for the order has never been 
rescinded. At any rate, that was what Broderick's 
enemies said, and there was a good deal of difficulty 
in finding answer to the charge. 



When the quarrel came on between Buchanail 
and Douglas, Broderick, who had many a time and 
oft exhausted the vocabulary of abuse in denuncia- 
tion of Douglas, became his partisan and sided 
with him through out the controversy. It was not 
that Broderick knew anything about the meritsi 
of the quarrel. He was no doctrinaire. He was no 
statesman. He was intended for a feudal baron 
of mediaeval times, surrounded by retainers and 
in perpetual war with neighbor, or remote barons. 
He had the temper of a Bajazet, and by some whim 
of nature he came into the world some centuries 
later than he was due. We think of him as of the 
Black Douglas, with sword on thigh, spur on heel, 
foot in stirrup, lance in rest, visor down, and steed 
at full tilt, running a course; or, better yet, in the 
melee where blade and mace do their bloody work. 
What cared he for the slavery question? True, he 
would have freed every one of them for an ounce 
of additional political power in California to-day, and 
reinslaved double as many for half an ounce more of 
the samie power to-morrow. And yet the man is one 



194 

of the "martyrs" of the cause. Humor is a monkey 
that goes gadding about and finding strange bed- 
fellows. Broderick was more like a Southerner 
than any Southerner in California, and a thousand 
times more Southern than Gwin, and it is quite 
likely that had he been allowed to name the Federal 
office-holders of California without going on record 
he would have favored the Lecompton constitution 
and been killed by a man from Pennsylvania, or 
Ohio, instead of one from Kentucky. 

Dave Terry was as strong a personality as 
Broderick, as brave a man physically or morally, and 
an abler man mentally. He had been a Know- 
Nothing and was not a partisan of Gwin. As a 
lawyer he ranged with the leaders of the bar, and 
his character was as eminent as that of any other 
man on the Pacific coast. Broderick himself was 
his eulogist, and respected and admired him. 

When Broderick appealed to the Democrats of 
California in his quarrel with Buchanan, he was 
overwhelmingly defeated. That infuriated him. He 
bolted and put out a ticket with a Republican at its 
head, and the people beat him at the polls by an 
enormous majority. In a speech in the regular 
Democratic convention Terry had denied that 
Stephen A. Douglas was the leader of the Broderick 
party, though he asserted that a Douglass was — 
Frederick, the black Douglass. The sarcasm was 
reported to Broderick, and he was infuriated. 



Broderick denounced Terry in unmeasured terms, 
and closed with these words : "I have hitherto 
spoken of him as an honest man, as the only honest 
man on the bench of a miserable, corrupt Supreme 
Court, but now I find I was mistaken. I take it 



195 

all back. He is just as bad as the others." That 
language in that community meant one of two 
things, a retraction, or a fight. Broderick had fought 
one duel and his life was saved by the watch in the 
fob pocket of his trousers. Terry had acted as 
a second in the duel. That population was composed 
of the most adventurous men of that generation, and 
dueling was a daily event. Gwin had been on the 
field and so had numerous others. 

Terry demanded a retraction of Broderick's 
words. The best friends of Broderick urged him 
to make it. In answer to Terry he evaded it. Terry 
gave him another chance to retract, and again the 
best friends of Broderick urged him to do so, but the 
Hotspurs would not have it. They declared that he 
would have to fight in the end, and that he might as 
well begin with Terry. Broderick was the best shot 
on the coast, and he was more than that — he was 
the quickest. As the challenged party, Broderick 
chose pistols, and over the protest of Terry's seconds, 
Broderick's seconds insisted upon, and, as the chal- 
lenged party, secured as one of the terms of the 
combat that after the principals had announced 
"Ready," they might discharge their weapons upon 
the word, "fire, one, two," after the first and before 
the last. Terry's seconds contended that the word 
"three" should be added, that such quick action was 
unprecedented, that everywhere and always the 
word was "fire, one, two, three." But the "code of 
honor," gave the election to the challenged and the 
seconds of Broderick secured for their principal this 
immense advantage. 

On the field Terry was much the more composed. 
Broderick was laboring under powerful excitement, 



196 

but by sheer force of will and wonderful physical 
courage he controlled it and showed an admirable 
front. Terry won the weapons and Broderick the 
ground and the word. Broderick was placed with 
his back to the sun just emerging from below the 
horizon, another great advantage. When the word 
was given Broderick fired at "one" ; Terry fired 
before "two." Broderick's ball entered the ground 
about nine feet in his front. It is claimed that the 
trigger of his pistol was more delicate than was 
Terry's and that it was discharged prematurely ; but 
that claim was made by the gunsmith, whose pistols 
had not been used, and it was denied bv both of 
Broderick's seconds in a card to the public. That 
the pistol exploded prematurely is certain, but it 
was due to the excitement under which Broderick 
was laboring, a suppressed nervousness that was 
apparent when the men were placed. He was 
confident that he would kill Terry, and perhaps there 
was not a man in California who was not surprised 
at the result when Broderick fell. Had the terms of 
the duel been modified and the word "three" added it 
is probable that Broderick would have survived. 
Terry only sought to wound him severely enough 
to prevent another shot and had he been allowed 
the further time he would have put the ball farther 
"out" so as to escape the lung. It only shows what 
pygmies men are in the hands of fate. 

Broderick dead was a "martyr," so would Terry 
have been the martyr had he fallen and Broderick 
survived. With his violent temper, overbearing 
manner, and brutal tongue, it was as certain that 



197 

Broderick would fill a bloody grave as any event in 
the future could be certain that had the slightest 
element of chance. 

His fate was happier than Terry's. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY. 

This was written when the United States and 
Great Britain were establishing the boundary 
between the Dominion and Alaska. 

We have sent some high joint commissioners 
across the waters to deliberate and adjudicate upon 
the disputed Alaskan boundary, but it is semi-offi- 
cially declared that our high joints are instructed 
not to "deliberate," and the personnel of the 
American members of the commission is an absolute 
warrant against any such thing. Through one rose 
from the dead and pleaded, Henry Cabot Lodge, 
Elihu Root and George Turner would be of the 
same opinion still. 

About the year 1754 England was engaged in a 
war against France, and it was not a very successful 
war. Admiral Byng not only failed to succor Fort 
Mahon, but he failed to fight the French fleet. The 
Duke of Richelieu, a worthless courtier of a more 
worthless court, with no military prowess, but 
superb personal courage, reduced Minorca. All 
England was enraged, and Brown's "Estimate" was 
published in order that Britons might read that 
"they were a race of cowards and scoundrels; that 
nothing could save them ; that they were on the point 
of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they 
richly deserved their fate." 

Now it was that a great man rose in the kingdom. 



198 

Instinctively the country turned to him, and he was 
given power and intrusted with the conduct of the 
war. A little while and all was well and all was 
victory. Goree was conquered. Guadaloupe fell, to 
be followed by Ticonderoga and Niagara. Boscawen 
beat the Toulon fleet and Wolfe died, victorious and 
glorious, on the heights of Abraham. Hawke 
defeated the Brest fleet, Montreal fell and Canada 
was subdued. Clive's success at the East was equally 
pronounced and equally splendid. Nor was French 
arms less unfortunate on the continent of Europe, 
where Creveldt and Minden were French defeats. 
The story is told in one of the innumerable brilliant 
passages in Macaulay. 



And so it was that William Pitt, first of the name, 
earned a place in the company of great ministers, 
and we associate him with such rulers as Richelieu 
and Bismarck. His administration was as splendid 
as Marlborough's and as successful as Cromwell's, 
and he was aptly characterized as one who "loved 
England as an Athenian loved the city of the Violet 
Crown, as a Roman loved the 'maxima verum 
Roma.' " He made England drunk with victory; but 
behind it stalked the costly, yet vaulable, lesson of 
disaster. Had the French flag remained at Quebec, 
had Cape Breton continued a French fortress, the 
English flag would have remained at Boston and at 
Charleston. New York and Pennsylvania, Virginia 
and North Carolina would have continued ''as loyal 
as Kent." When England drove France out of 
Canada it was but a question of time when America 
would drive England out of the colonies. Wolfe 
on the Plains of Abraham carved out American 
independence. 



19§ 

With the F^rench in Canada our fathers would 
not have rebehed for ten times the tax Lord North 
UTiposed, and with the French in Canada, the pohcy 
of Burke would have prevailed over the king and 
his ministers in English councils. It took Yorktown 
to teach England what she had long repeated. 
"Britons never will be slaves." Yorktown not only 
made independence for the thirteen colonies, but it 
was at Yorktown that was born the more than 
freedom that Canada, Australia, South Africa and 
New Zealand now enjoy. 



For more than one hundred years America and 
England have never been entirely without a diplo- 
matic crow to pick, and several times the two 
countries have been on the verge of war. They did 
go to war in 1812, but it was not much of a war, and 
on the part of England it was a mere episode, that 
country having important litigations in the courts 
of Mars at that time with one Napoleon Bonaparte. 
Canada, and by Canada I mean all that part of North 
America under the British flag — Canada has been 
the occasion of much diplomacy, to which the United 
States and Great Britain have been parties. It was 
in the nature of an accident that England did not 
throw Canada in when peace was made at the 
close of the Revolutionary war, and Mr. John W. 
Foster, in his excellent book, "A Century of Ameri- 
can Diplomacy," intimates that we would have got 
Canada had not Washington feared that France 
would claim it for her services in the war. The 
population was French and anxious to be restored 
to the dominion of the French crown. Our states- 
men were wise enough to know that it was better 
for the United States that England retain Canada 



200 

than for France to regain it. The hand of fate was 
in the thing. With France re-estabhshed in Canada, 
war between the United States and France would 
soon have followed. England would have licked 
France for us, and thus history would have served 
up a very different kettle of fish for posterity. 

That Canada will some day be a part of the 
American Union is no sort of doubt, and there is 
just a little doubt that Anglo-Saxon federation the 
world over will be one and inseparable before we 
and Canada are one politically. 



It is somewhere related that Dr. Franklin strove to 
incorporate in the treaty of 1783 a clause providing 
for absolute free trade between England and the 
United States, but England was as much in love with 
a protective tariff in that day as Allegheny County 
is in our day, and thus the broad and expansive 
question of protection came into our politics, has 
had a paramount place much of the time, has been 
a "cardinal" all the time, and promises to be with 
us for some time to come. If, in 1883, England had 
done what Joseph Chamberlain wanted England to 
do in 1903, protection would be as dead in American 
politics as the pragmatic section of Maria Theresa 
is in the politics of Continental Europe, but England 
procrastinated away her day of opportunity. Mr. 
Chamberlain spoke too late. During Washington's 
administration John Jay, then Chief Justice of the 
United States, was sent to England to negotiate a 
treaty. He was partly successful in his mission, but 
the treaty was not all that was hoped for. In those 
days England and France were the issues in Amer-^ 
ican politics. The French Revolution was not yet 
through washing the face of Europe in blood, and 



201 

England was all that stood between chaos and order. 
Washington, Hamilton and Jay were for Engalnd 
and Jefferson and Clinton were for France. Jay's 
treaty occasioned some most terrific politics. But 
the administration was strong enough to secure its 
ratification, and, before the close of the century, we 
were at war with France. Mr. Jay's treaty was 
beneficient in its operation, and was a long step in 
the way of closer relations between the two English- 
speaking nations. 

Not a great while afterward came the war of 
1812. England and Napoleon were in a death 
struggle. At Tilsit the Corsican had the continent, 
including Russia, at his feet, and he was preparing 
to hurl the whole continental power against the 
island foe. England was as supreme on sea as 
Napoleon on land, and to maintain her supremacy 
she was as contemptuous of the rights of others as 
Napoleon himself. The civilized world was subject 
to the Berlin and Milan decrees of the Emperor 
and the Orders in Council of the British. Both 
belligerents treated us with contempt, and we were 
afraid of both. Finally England goaded us to a 
fight, and when the whole world was gorged with 
fighting at the close of the Napoleonic wars, we 
sent Henry Clay, John Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, 
James A. Bayard and Jonathan Russell to Ghent 
to meet British commissioners and make a peace. 
There was no agreement as to the issues of war, and 
the American commissioners were not agreed among 
themselves. Finally they assented that there should 
be peace, but not until Andrew Jackson fought the 
bpttle that made him greater than Clay and Adams 
together did this country hear that peace was 
patched up. That is what delay did for these three 



202 

overshadowing characters of our poHtics of that 
generation. 



It was during Monroe's administration that the 
two countries agreed to a general disarmament on 
the Great Lakes. Had there been no such compact it 
is altogether probable that a great war would have 
come. For more than 100 years the Canadian 
fisheries have been a fruitful source of friction 
between England and the United States. Canada 
has the fishing ground, we have the market. It has 
been the aim of Canada to keep us from catching 
fish. It has been the aim of the United States to 
keep Canada from selling fish. A very pretty 
quarrel, a splendid illustration of that old economic 
hog, protection. It would take a Philadelphia 
lawyer to tell how many times the Canadian fisheries 
have been the subject of diplomatic correspondence 
and diplomatic negotiation between the two coun- 
tries. The whole thing could be settled exactly 
right in five minutes if Canada would let us fish 
where we please, and if we would let Canada sell 
fish where she pleased, but that would be the death 
of that darling little greedy tariff beggar, yclept the 
"New England fishing industry." 

Then there was the Northeastern boundary that 
might have precipitated war at any time. It had 
been in dispute ever since 1783, and now it was 
John Tyler's administration, 1841-1845. Daniel 
Webster was Secretary of State. Lord Ashburton 
was the British commissioner, and he and Webster 
came to an agreement and fixed the line where it is 
to this day. It was one of the few times we got the 
thrifty end of a diplomatic bargain, and Mr. Webster 



203 

was just enough to give much of the credit to a 
man to whom history has been neither just nor 
generous — John Tyler. 



The next matter of serious negotiation between 
the two countries was the Oregon boundary. Young 
America was just beginning to feel his oats, and his 
cry was ''Fifty-four Forty or Fight." "Old Bill" 
Allen, as he came to be known, was the author of 
the cry. The Democratic party of those days was a 
jingo and very strenuous. Its chief mission on earth 
was to whip England and annex Canada. Years 
later it was a test of Democracy to go wild over 
the fistic exploits of John C. Heenan, a ring hero 
without a single victory. We went into the 
negotiation and lost — disastriously lost — probably 
for the reason that we were too busy annexing Texas 
and pickling a rod for Mexico to think of fighting 
England. 

In 1850 there was negotiated the Clayton Bulwer 
treaty that neither country ever exactly understood. 
It suspended the Monroe doctrine so far as concerned 
that negotiation, and made Great Britain and the 
United States a sort of limited copartnership. It 
lasted above fifty years, and was only got rid of 
the other day. 

It was William L. Marcy, Secretary of State in 
the Cabinet of President Pierce, who negotiated the 
treatv of reciprocity with Canada. Both countries 
found great advantage in the treaty, but because 
of Canada's supposed sympathy with the South in 
the great war of 1861-65, the treaty was not re- 
newed after its expiration. 



204 

We had no more serious diplomatic controversy 
with Great Britain until the Trent affair during our 
great war. If Mr. Lincoln had not been endowed 
with enough common sense for two or three Presi- 
dents that affair would have brought about war and 
the Southern Confederacy would have achieved its 
independence. It was the blockade that destroyed 
the South, and England would have transferred the 
blockade to Northern ports and opened Southern. 
President Lincoln and Queen Victoria restrained 
Seward and Palmerston — the good genius of the 
American Union was in the ascendant. It was a 
heavy tax on the national pride, but it had to be paid. 

During the war England sold all sorts of contra- 
band of war to the North and did not disdain to do 
a little shipping business with the South. Thus the 
Alabama swept the starry flag from the high seas. 
Mr. Sumner wanted to charge England a billion or 
so for that and take Canada for payment. England 
started to arm, and then the good sense of Gea 
Grant did for us what the good sense of Abraham 
Lincoln had accomplished before. The matter was 
referred to arbitration, and the tribunal of Geneva 
was created. We got $15,000,000 in damages, and 
it was paid in gold. 



Mr. Seward bought Alaska of Russia and perhaps 
England now regrets that she did not take that 
territory at the conclusion of the Crimean war. Our 
country was not very much in love with Mr. 
Seward's trade, but it turned out a marvelously 
fortunate speculation. There is, or ought to be, a 
boundary between Alaska and the British posses- 
sions, and it is a physical fact that any two honest 
men ought to agree upon. The two countries are 



205 

not agreed, however, and each has appointed 
commissioners. Our men, so it is given out, have 
made up their minds to assent to nothing but the 
American contention. No doubt that is superlatively 
patriotic, but suppose the English commissioners are 
equally dogmatic and equally patriotic? Then 
suppose England should take the studs? 

When Charleston was bombarded by the Federal 
fleet an old darky was working in the garden and 
a shell lit near him and plowed a big hole in the 
ground. Throwmg down his hoe and making his 
escape, the old uncle exclaimed : "Dar ! hell have 
laid a aig." 

Commonwealth avenue, Boston, the abiding place 
of the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge's most distinguished 
constituents, thought it was going to get one of 
"them things" in the Spanish war. It might get a 
nest full of them if the distinguished Senator con- 
tinues as strenous and as patriotic as he gives it out 
he is. ^ 

Let us hope England will come to our conclusion. 
She must do it. War is out of the question — it is 
absurd. 



DAVID B. HILL. 

Perhaps it was that desperately wicked and 
wonderfully fascinating child of Balzac's stupendous 
genius, Jacques Collet, who is made to say that one 
must plow through humanity like a cannon ball or 
glide through it like a pestilence. The metaphor 
applies to New York politics with all exactitude. A 
New York party leader should have the wisdom of 
Ulysses to comprehend, and the hand of Achilles to 



206 

execute, and if he have both, so much the better. 
The American people have chosen Presidents at 
thirty-one quadrennial elections. New York sup- 
ported the successful candidate in twenty-five of 
them; twice she divided her vote — 1808 and 1824 — 
and four times she was on the losing side — 1812, 
1856, 1868, and 1876. However, in 1868 a man of 
the name of Tweed did a deal of the counting, and 
in 1876 there were those who claimed that Mr. 
Tilden, who carried the Empire State, was elected. 

De Witt Clinton and Roscoe Conkling were men 
who propelled themselves through politics, and 
Grover Cleveland may be said to be of their order. 
Martin Van Buren and Samuel J. Tilden glided 
through the mazes of politics, and we may add 
David B. Hill as one educated in their school. 



There are few higher stations in American politics 
than the office of governor of New York. Not to 
mention the Van Twillers and Stuyvesants of the 
Dutch period, and the Ingoldsbys, Beekmans and 
De Lanceys of the Colonial period, we have in that 
high place since the adoption of the Constitution of 
the United States, George Clinton, John Jay, Daniel 
D. Tompkins, De Witt Clinton, Martin Van Buren, 
William L. Marcy, William H. Seward, Silas 
Wright, Hamilton Fish, Horatio Seymour, John A. 
Dix, Samuel J. TiTHen, Grover Cleveland, Levi P. 
Morton and Theodore Roosevelt. 

David B. Hill was seven years governor of New 
York, and so demeaned himself in that great office 
that in political importance he was second only to the 
President of the United States. 

In the Continental Congress New York had for 
representatives such men as George Clinton, John 



207 

Jay, Robert Livingston and Gouverneur Morris, and 
later she contributed these great names to the United 
States Senate : Rufus King, Aaron Burr, De Witt 
CHnton, Martin Van Buren, WilHam L. Marcy, 
Silas Wright, Daniel S. Dickinson, John A. Dix, 
William H. Seward, Hamilton Fish, Preston King, 
Roscoe Conkling, Francis Kernan and William M. 
Evarts. 

David B. Hill was a Senator from New York, 
1891-97, and few statesmen in our history in a 
single term made so great an impression on that 
body. Could he have been to Cleveland what his 
predecessor, Silas Wright, was to Cleveland's pre- 
decessor, Martin Van Buren, Democracy would be 
wearing garlands thTs good day. As a debater Hill 
found no superior in the Senate ; as a lawyer he was 
the equal of the foremost. It was Hill who furnished 
the Supreme Court with the law for the majority 
opinion in the income tax case. 



It was a bleak day, January 7, 1892. The sky was 
leaden, the wind was surly, the ground was covered 
with the dampest and the coldest of snow. About 
11:30 o'clock David B. Hill entered the Senate 
chamber through the east door. He wore striped 
gray trousers and silk hat, and when he removed his 
heavy overcoat he appeared in a regulation Prince 
Albert. His face, always pale, paler than Blaine's, 
paler than Tom Ewing's, was unusually pale that 
day. He was accompanied by his friend, follower, 
disciple and fellow townsman, Hosea H. Rockwell, 
of Elmira, then contestant of the seat in the House 
of Representatives held by Henry T. Noyes, of the 
Twenty-eighth district of New York. 



208 

It was said that it was the first time Hill had ever 
set foot inside the Senate chamber; indeed, it was 
stated that it was the first time he had ever entered 
the Capitol. The galleries were crowded, for Hill 
was in every man's thoughts, and now he was to 
wear the toga of a Senator. His desk was decorated 
with flowers, and his friend and fellow-Senator, 
Calvin S. Brice, sat next him. The House of 
Representatives, then overwhelmingly Democratic, 
was quorumless, for the Sergeant-at-arms, accom- 
panied by above five score members was in the 
Senate chamber to hail the man whom they hoped 
and believed would be the next President of the 
United States. Senator Hiscock escorted his col- 
league to the bar, and Levi P. Morton, then Vice 
President, administered the oath. 

And now came gratulations, and for an hour the 
new Senator held a levee in the rear of the seats 
on the Democratic side. Gorman, Brice and Barbour 
conferred with him. His seat was that recently 
vacated by Wade Hampton, and it was remarked 
that in close proximity were the desks of Brice, 
Barbour and Daniel. 



When Massena, penned up in Genoa, besieged by 
an Austrian army and blockaded by an English 
fleet, was told that Bonaparte, then first consul had 
crossed the Alps and was making straight for the 
plains of Italy, the grim old soldier exclaimed, 
"Making straight for the Tuileries, rather!" And 
as Marengo was but a station on Napoleon's way 
to the throne, the Senate was intended to be a 
station on Hill's journey to the White House. New 
York was his ; he had just triumphed in the organiza- 



209 

tion of the other branch of Congress ; he had many 
friends in the leading Democrats of the South. 

But there was a fatahty in it. The "snap 
convention" was a blunder; the attempted humilia- 
tion of the House Committee of Elections was 
another. The deaths of Henry W. Grady and John 
S. Barbour were irreparable misfortunes. But for 
these, Cleveland might not have been nominated, and 
Hill might have been chosen. 

Fortune knocks once at every door. Twice she 
knocked at the door of David B. Hill. Adroit as he 
was in management, infallible as was his insight, 
nature and education denied him that rarest quality, 
which in a soldier we call genius, and in a statesman 
we call instinct. Had he been endowed with that 
attribute, he would have realized in 1888 that the 
Hill eggs were in the Cleveland basket. Doubtless 
Hill was loyal to the national ticket; but he should 
have been willing to fall outside the breastworks, 
although that was not necessary. Not to criticise 
him, but for illustration, what would be the place 
in literature of that most delightful of historical 
romances, if Sir Walter had, as he did, given Gurth 
the victory at quarter staff, and had he, as he did 
not, unhorsed Ivanhoe in the lists of Ashby de la 
Zouch? That is the way the Democratic party 
looked at it, and that is what overwhelmed all the 
practical politicians at Chicago in June, 1892. Had 
Cleveland been re-elected in 1888, nothing could 
have prevented the succession to the Presidency of 
David B. Hill in 1892. 



Fortune again knocked at Hill's door in 1896, and 
beckoned him out of the convention of that year. 
More than a third of the membership would have 



210 

followed him and nominated him, and who can say 
that he would not have polled more votes east of 
the Mississippi than Mr. Bryan? He was con- 
fronted with a revolution, and dealt with the frenzied 
delegates as Louis XVI dealt with the sanguinary 
sansculottes, and failed as Louis failed. 

He had precedent. He was the disciple of Tilden. 
Tilden was the disciple of Van Buren. The Demo- 
cratic convention that nominated Lewis Cass for 
President in 1848 was not revolutionary; but there 
was a bolt. Van Buren was the candidate of the 
bolters, and Tilden supported him, and so formidable 
was the revolt that Van Buren polled more votes in 
New York than Cass. Perhaps there is no word 
for which Hill had more aversion than "bolter," 
and no word for which he had greater respect than 
"regularity." He might have reverted to the career 
of Tilden, the bolter of 1848, and the creator of the 
Democratic renaissance in 1874. 

Tilden was a genius, the greatest teacher of 
Democracy since Jefferson, and, with the possible 
exception of Lincoln, the greatest politician of our 
history. He was an accomplished statesman before 
he was a voter. While yet a schoolboy he was a 
safe counselor. His cunning attained to the dignity 
of wisdom, and he was the most perfect and con- 
summate master of detail of all our party leaders. 
Had Tilden been at Chicago the heresy of Bryanism 
would have gone the way the corruption of Tweed- 
ism went. 

Hill preferred to retire to Wolfert's Roost to 
await the lull of the storm. That is not the way to 
meet revolution, not the way to exocrise heresy. 
There was never one moment that Hill supposed that 
Bryan had the ghost of a chance to become President 



211 

of the United States. Maybe that accounts for his 
conduct in 1896. Doubtless Hill would have led 
the Palmer and Buckner forces had he apprehended 
a chance of Bryans' election. It was the mistake 
that Hill made in 1896, when he could have crushed 
it, that gave vitality to Bryanism four years later. 
And so we had the campaign of 1900. 



We see the 5Iudgeon and the rapier in New York 
politics, and as illustrative of them two incidents 
may be cited. 

It is realted that on the night before the assem- 
bling of the Democratic State convention of 1857 
Dean Richmond and Peter Cagger were in confer- 
ence at their hotel in Syracuse, where the convention 
was held. Their conversation was much like this : 
"Well, Cagger, about Secretary of State?" 
"Gid Tucker ; the newspaper men want him." 
"Put him down then. What about comptroller?" 
"Oh, Church, of course. There's nobody but him 
we can trust. 

"Put him down then. Who for treasurer?" 
"Don't know. Some of our boys talk about 
Vanderpoel. Van's a good fellow, knows about 
lager, talks Dutch, and is a favorite with the 
women." 

"Put him down. Anybody want to be attorney- 
general?" 

"Tremaine's got it pretty bad." 

"Put him down. What about State engineer?" 

"Well, on the whole," replied Cagger, "Van 

Richmond's our best man; but the New Yorkers 

are in a row over it. Sickles and Sam Butterworth 

are strong for Charley Graham, but Fernando and 



212 

John Kelley are against it. If we go Graham there'll 
be a split." 

"Oh, no — no splits. Give them Richmond ; they'll 
stand it ; they must. And this prison inspectorship ? 
Fifty want it. It is a regular nuisance. I'll tell you 
what, Peter, suppose we let the convention settle 
that?" 

And it was so ordered. The next day the slate 
was put through in a few minutes after the con- 
vention was organized. As many hours were 
consumed before a candidate for prison inspector 
was nominated. 

That is bossism with a bludgeon. It has thrived 
in New York since the time of Burr and Hamilton. 



On the morning of Austerlitz the practiced eye of 
Napoleon glanced over what was to be that glorious 
field, and turning to Soult, the Emperor asked : 

"Marshal, how long would it take you to reach the 
heights of Prutzen ?" 

Napoleon knew that the army that held those 
heights at nightfall would be the victorious army. 

In 1848 Thurlow Weed knew that Martin Van 
Buren held the key to the political situation, and 
well he knew that Van Buren would never open the 
door of the White House to Henry Clay. The 
Whig party loved Clay as no other American politi- 
cal leader was ever loved, more devotedly than the 
Northern Democracy loved Douglas, than the 
Southern Democracy loved Breckinridge, than the 
Republican party loved Blaine. "Henry Clay 
among men as Eclipse among horses !" "Place him 
before the crowned heads of Europe, or the diplo- 
mats at Ghent, or in the American Senate, or at the 
bar of the Supreme Court, or before twelve men in 



213 

a box, or on the hustings, and by , he's captain 

of every crowd he gets in." That is what they 
thought of "Harry of the West." 

New York was the pivotal State. Polk had carried 
New York in 1844, simply because Van Buren 
revered the memory of Jackson, and was the enemy 
of Jackson's enemies. 



And so the Whig convention of 1848 assembled 
at Philadelphia. Months before in paragraphs in 
the Albany Evening Journal, Weed had insidiously 
suggested the name of Taylor, then fresh from his 
victories in Mexico. The convention and the party 
wanted Clay ; but Weed wanted victory. Talleyrand 
never played the game more skillfully than did the 
Albany editor. He knew men, their hopes and fears, 
their strength and weakness. He prevailed. Taylor 
was nominated. The party was enraged. Horace 
Greeley wrote the famous editorial, "The Philadel- 
phia Slaughter-house"; but Weed knew what he 
was doing. 

Having managed the Whig convention, Weed now 
undertook to manage the Free Soil convention. The 
Free Soilers, of New York, were Whigs and 
Democrats, and the Whigs had no use for Van 
Buren, while the Democrats looked on him as a 
martyr. Van Buren cared nothing about slavery, 
and probably had little objection to it ; but with the 
assistance of Benjamin F. Butler, who had been 
Jackson's Attorney-General, Weed made Van Buren 
the Free Soil candidate for President. He polled 
120,000 votes in New York, and that gave the State 
to Taylor and elected him. 

That was the rapier in politics. David B. Hill 



214 



could take punishment, as sundry dents in Dick 
Croker's bludgeon evidenced. He should have used 
the bludgeon in 1896. 



ORATORS PAST AND PRESENT. 

For above 200 years the English-speaking people 
of both hemispheres have been ruled by eloquence, 
spoken and written. And one of the foremost ex- 
emplars of spoken eloquence defined it as "reason 
red hot." Declamation is not always eloquence, 
though it embellishes and adorns it. When Grattan 
made his maiden speech in the Commons men did 
not know whether to laugh at or hiss the grotesque 
figure he cut, but it was only a little while until 
genius triumphed and Grattan stood forth one of the 
many very great orators of his generation. Sir 
Robert Walpole, in derision, called the first Pitt, 
"that terrible Cornet of Horse"; but all in all, to 
Pitt must be awarded first place among the par- 
liamentary gladiators of our race. It was an enemy 
who said of him that to create him nature joined 
Demosthenes and Cicero; that he surpassed the 
Greek in loftiness of thought, and equaled the 
Roman in wealth and expression. He was as virile 
in the Cabinet as he was eloquent in the Senate, the 
man of action as well as the man of thought, Eng- 
land's greatest ruler since Cromwell, and the 
dazzling sucesses of his administration, evidenced by 
victories on land and sea in ever quarter of the globe, 
made him the idol of the English people and the 
master of the English Parliment. He was the 
"Great Commoner," the first of parlimentary orators 



215 

— above his distinguished son, above Burke, above 
Fox, above Gladstone, above our own Clay, Webster 
or Calhoun. 



It was the eloquence of Patrick Henry that roused 
our fathers to resistance to the demands of the 
British crown, and it was that same lofty and 
thrilling eloquence that vitalized the first ten 
amendments to our Federal Constitution, without 
which the Federal Union might have been a failure. 

It was the eloquence of Wendell Phillips, Henry 
Ward Beecher, Owen Love joy and Jim Jane, speak- 
ing to a subject of which they were defiantly, if not 
densely, ignorant, that fired the Northern heart, 
precipitated a bloody war, and brought about a 
tremendous social, political and industrial revolution. 
Thomas F. Marshall, Sargeant S. Prentiss and 
Richard Menifee were wonderful orators, as were 
Rufus Choate, Thomas Corwin and Henry Winter 
Davis. They played their parts on the public stage, 
but their fame lives more in tradition than in history. 



We hear much to the effect that the day of the 
orator is over. Not so. The orator is with us as 
of yore, but his audience is a better judge of elo- 
quence, or rather, it is not so impressionable as it was 
fifty years ago, though there are groundings in the 
land and they have ears to be split — some of them in 
Congress and in national conventions. In the Fifty- 
second Congress were some orators little if any 
inferior to any our country has produced — giving to 
the term orator its commonly accepted definition. 
W. Bourke Cockran, William J. Bryan, William 
C. P. Breckinridge, William L. Wilson and John 
R. Fellows could thrill their colleagues to the mar- 



216 

row and put the House in an uproar of applause. 
As a declaimer Bryan was superb, not inferior to 
Cockran himself. He had the face, the figure, the 
voice, the attitude, the vocabulary, and even when his 
speech was only empty, visionary and voiceful 
declamation he swept the American Congress off 
its legs. For example, he delivered himself of the 
following extravagance when debating the measure 
providing for the repeal of the purchasing clause of 
the so-called Sherman silver law : 

"At Marengo the Man of Destiny, sad and disheartened, 
thought the battle lost. He called to a drummer boy and 
ordered him to beat a retreat. The lad replied: 'Sire, I 
do now know how. Desaix has never taught me to re- 
treat, but I can beat a charge. Oh, I can beat a charge 
that would make the dead fall in line! I beat that charge 
at the bridge of Lodi; I beat it at Mount Tabor; I beat it 
at the Pyramids. Oh, may I beat it here,' The charge 
was ordered, the battle won, and Marengo was added to 
the victories of Napoleon." 

He took the House by storm, and grave statesmen 
were thrown into a delirium of enthusiasm, though 
the "burst of eloquence" would have merited nothing 
but derisive laughter even in a backwoods debating 
society. Perhaps all Bryan knows of Bonaparte he 
got out of that extravagant panegyric by John S. 
C. Abbott, or those silly novels by Miss Muhlbach. It 
is one of the curiosities of forensic eloquence that 
an orator from Kentucky appropriated the above 
when presenting the name of Joseph Clay Styles 
Blackburn for President of the United States in the 
Chicago convention that nominated Mr. Bryan for 
President because of another hysteric piece of elo- 
quence that was a paraphrase of a passage of 
Burke's great speech on the regency bill. 



217 

Marengo is one of the most interesting of the 
Corsican demigod's battles, and the credit for the 
victory may be, and has been, ascribed to several 
different individuals, as Eckmuhl is credited to Ney. 
Lannes and Victor saved the day by their stubborn 
retreat; Kellumann gained the day by his brilliant 
and resistless charge ; Desaix brought victory by his 
timely arrival on the field, then, lost. To grim old 
Massena is due the credit because his heroic defense 
of Genoa made the campaign possible. All these 
things may be said, and have been said; but the 
truth is that Marengo is just like the others — 
Napoleon Bonaparte's victory. Take a good 
checker player and let him sit down against a poor 
player and there will be no brilliant playing; the 
blunders of one player make that out of the question. 
It will degenerate into a cutthroat game, and the 
good player will win, but his adversary will afford 
him small opportunity to astonish the onlookers by 
his brilliant combinations. And there was something 
like that at Marengo. Old Melas. the Austrian 
commander, had been educated in the wars of Maria 
Theresa, and knew just enough of his business 
to disconcert his adversary by his very blunders, 
and so, for haff a day, he was victor at Marengo. 
It was a case of Jupiter powerless before stupidity. 

And thus the credit for the victory is ascribed 
to this one, that one and t'other one, but it was 
left to Mr. Bryan, a boy orator of the American 
Congress, to inform us that a drummer boy taught 
Napoleon Bonaparte the art of war, and as a starter, 
showed him how to gain the battle of the Marengo. 
And as though that were not startling enough, he 
says that Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Vov- 
goux, a blue-blooded aristocrat, thrown into prison 



218 

by the revolutionary tribunal for his gentle birth, 
showed a gamin how to beat a drum. 

Let us see what the Hon. Bryan was driving at. 
Why, he was attempting to teach Grover Cleveland 
the science of finance, the philosophy of a stump-tail 
dollar, the excellence of 16 to 1. Hence this 
hyperbole pronounced in Demosthenesean vein. 
Horace Greeley said it took fourteen things to make 
an orator — one of them lungs — and that John A. 
Logan had lungs. So has Bryan. He is given to 
going off at the half-cock. Napoleon was not "sire" 
until December, 1804; Marengo was pulled off 
June, 1800. 



Robert G. Cousins, of Iowa, is an orator and a 
brilliant declaimer. On at least three ocassinos he 
astonished and delighted his fellows by his 
fervid and dramatic eloquence. He seldom spoke, 
though the foremost orator in either House of 
Congress, but when he did his periods were as virile 
as they were rhetorical. Macaulay recites Burke's 
opinion that by slow degrees Charles James Fox 
come to be the most brilliant parlimentary debater 
the world ever saw, and then ventures the opinion 
that Fox attained his excellence at the expense of 
his audience, that during one session he spoke at 
every sitting of the Commons but one, and regretted 
that he did not speak that night. Of course, a man 
who speaks every day is bound to make some dull 
speeches. In his famous canvass of Mississippi even 
Sergeant S. Prentiss occasionally made a stupid 
speech. It was by continued practice that John 
Quincy Adams became the first debater in the 
American Congress. Stephen A. Douglas was con- 



219 

stantly on his legs, and they said that Allen G. 
Thurman was positively garrulous. Blaine carried 
a chip on his shoulder when a Senator and Ben Hill 
was ever ready to knock it off. Edmunds and Beck 
spoke daily. 

L. Q. C. Lamar was an exception. Master of the 
most exquisite style of any man who sat in the 
United States Senate the last half of the last century, 
not even excepting Roscoe Conkling, and scarce 
second to Jefferson Davis himself as a dialectician, 
Lamar was a poet and a dreamer as well as a jurist, 
a soldier, and a statesman. He did not live among 
men. He kept company with the airy creatures of 
his exuberant imagination. He rarely spoke, but, 
to borrow a figure, when he did speak it was as 
Jupiter would have spoken had Jupiter talked 
English. Nobody ever believed that Lamar ever did 
his best. It was impossible to fix a limit to that 
splendid and exquisite diction. 



Cousins dreams too much. His ideal ever eludes 
him. He would do better than well, and thus 
confounds his skill. 

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, 

To guard a title that was rich before, 

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

To throw a perfume on the violet, 

To smooth the ice, or add another hue 

Unto the rainbow, or with taper light 

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 

Is wastful and ridiculous excess. 

Had Cousins sought a place on Cannon's com- 
mittee and lifted- some of the burden ofT old Joe's 
shoulders. Had he spoken every day and taken and 
given blows with Champ Clark and Dave De 



220 

Armond and got some wounds it would have been 
far better for him. It is a mighty poor veteran 
who has no scars to show. Your parHament man 
must go where David directed that Uriah be placed 
— in the fore-front of battle, where valiant men are 
found. Mr. Cousins' speeches may be less delightful, 
but Mr. Cousins himself will be a greater factor in 
public life when he gets down to real work. 



Cousins won his spurs in a peanut debate — that 
time the American Congress, composed of stump- 
speakers, undertook to discipline Thomas F. Bayard 
for making a stump speech. Mr. Bayard had made 
a remark to the efifect that there was a marvelous 
deal of humbug in the dogma of a protective tariff. 
Here is what Cousins had to say to that : 

"He knew that if you should blot out the list of names 
identified with the doctrine of protection in our history 
you would leave it a literary desert as insignificant and 
barren of achievement as Disraeli's grandfather's chapter 
of events that never took place." 

That is very good, and only needs a little bit of 
truth to be excellent. 

In that same speech Mr. Cousins delivered the 
following apostrophe in praise of the system that 
men like George McDuffle and Frank Hurd, Robert 
J. Walker and David A. Wells declared to be the 
invention of certain pirates of the medieval ages who 
infested and harried the Mediterranean Sea : 

"Why, Mr. Speaker, by the stimulus and safeguard of 
protection, the genius of America developed a continent. 
It has achieved the impossible. It went into the ground 
and found the iron and brought it out to the light and 
usefulness. It formed it into wheels and turned it into 
shafts. It set the spindles going and the axles whirling. 



221 

It took the wool and cotton from the Middle, the South- 
ern and Western States, that had been feeding l:,nglish 
looms, and sent them spinning through our own. It 
touched the deft and cunning hand of toil and made inven- 
tion dream of better things. * * * With a band of iron 
in either hand, it started at the Orient, and with its sub- 
lime and determined face toward the West, it took its 
continental march. It would not stop. When it could not 
find a place to stand, it spanned with iron. It laughed 
and toiled and hurried on, until at last it found the Occi- 
dent. Then it became a moiling, tireless spider and wove 
the desert into a web of commerce. It stopped at every 
station and took the produce of the farm and left the 
produce of the factory. It looked into the childhood face 
of citizenship, and, studying its tendency of faculty or ge- 
nius, opened a thousand doors of various and different 
enterprises, and said: "Denizen of the free republic, take 
your choice.' " 

Imagine that said by a youthful giant, with a 
grand head and a grand bust, as black as Daniel 
Webster or Thomas Corwin, and with a voice that 
inspirited, now terrible and now dulcet, and in an 
attitude that fixed every eye in that vast audience, 
and you have the scene and you almost forgive the 
fallacy of his preachment. 



Compare it with this glorious passage — John 
Addington Symond's eloquent tribute to the 
romantic drama of England : 

"What a future lay before this country lass — the bride - 
elect of Shakespeare's genius! For her there was pre- 
paring empire over the whole world of man — over the 
height and breadth and depth of heaven and earth and 
hell; over facts of nature and fables of romance; over his- 
tories of nations and of households; over heroes of past 
and present times and airy beings of poets' brains. Her's 
were Greene's meadows, watered bv an English stream. 
Her's Heywood's moss-grown manor houses. Peele's god- 
dess-haunted lawns were hers, and her's the palace-bor- 
dered ,paved ways of Verona. Her's was the darkness of 
the grave, the charnel house of Webster. She walked the 



222 

air-built loggie of Lylly's dreams and paced the clouds of 
Jonson's masques. She donned the ponderous sock and 
trod the measures of Volpone. She mouthed the mighty 
line of Marlowe. Chapman's massy periods and Mars- 
ton's pointed sentences were her's by heart. She went 
abroad, through primrose paths with Fletcher and learned 
Shirley's lambent wit. She wandered amid dark, dry 
places of the outcast soul with Ford, 'Hamlet' was her's. 
Antony and 'Cleopatra' was her's. And her's, too, was 
the 'Tempest.' Then, after many years, her children 
mated with famed poets in far distant lands. "Faust' and 
'Wallenstein,' 'Lucretica Borgia,' and 'Marian Delormi' 
are her's." 

That is eloquence in the class of Macaulay's 
"Warren Hastings" and "New Zealander," or 
Thackeray's "Marlborough." 



The House was considering a resolution relating 
to the martyr dead of the battleship Maine. Imagine 
a handsome man, young and engaging, commanding 
in presence and endowed with a voice that can roar 
like a lion or coo like a dove. The House was still 
as the finished periods fell from the lips of the 
youthful orator. 

"No foe had ever challenged them. The world can 
never know how brave they were. They never knew de- 
feat; they never shall. While at their posts of duty, sleep 
lulled them into the abyss; then death unlocked their 
slumbering eyes but for an instnat to behold its dreadful 
carnival, most of them just when hfe was full of hope and 
all its tides at their highest, grandest flow; just when the 
early sunbeams were falling on the steeps of fame and 
flooding all life's landscapes far out into the dreamy dis- 
tant horizon; just at that age when all the nymphs were 
making diadems and garlands, waving laurel wreaths be- 
fore the eyes of young and eager nature; just then when 
death seemed most i:nnatural. 

"Hovering about the dark waters of that mysterious 
harbor of Havana, the black-winged vulture watches for 
the belated dead, while over it and over all there is the 
eagle's piercing eye sternly watching for the trutn.'' 



223 

Here Cousins ceased. The House did not applaud ; 
it was too much thrilled for demonstration. A 
moment paused he, and then with an effect either 
Booth would have envied and neither Kemble could 
have surpassed, he slowly and impressively repeated : 

The tumult and the shouting dies — 
The captains and the kings depart — 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, 

An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget. 

The day of the orator is not yet passed. 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

About the middle of the eighteenth century the 
William Pitt, who later became Earl of Chatham, 
was the Minister of King George H and the real 
ruler of Great Britain. His administration was one 
of the most successful and most glorious the realm 
has ever known. On land and sea British arms were 
everywhere victorious — in Europe, in Asia, in 
America, wherever the issue of battle was joined ; 
and thus it is that the fame of Chatham rivals that 
of Cromwell, or Marlborough before him or that 
of Nelson or Wellington after him, in English 
annals. At that time the thirteen colonies of North 
America, extending from New Hampshire to 
Georgia, were a part of the British Empire, and 
every one of them as loyal to King George as Kent, 
or Yorkshire, or Somerset, or Northumberland. It 
was the genius of Pitt operating on the army and 
navy of England that wrested Canada from France 
and made an English possession of it, and American 



224 

soldiers and sailors helped in the enterpries. They 
were gallant to a degree in the capture of Lewisburg 
and the reduction of Cape Breton. 

After the accession of George III a new admin- 
istration was formed. Grenville, Bute, North, 
Townsend, Elden, Wedderburn and others who 
agreed with them took in hand the affairs of the 
British empire. They proposed to tax the thirteen 
colonies, to impose on them a part of the expense 
of defending them. It was perfectly legal, and if it 
were not so unpatriotic, I would say of it, what I 
think of it, that it was perfectly just, for the war 
was on our account as well as on account of the rest 
of the realm. But it was a foolish thing to do, 
however legal, and the result was our independence, 
of which we are all glad and proud. When peace 
was made England wanted to fling in Canada for 
good count and pull out of the western hemisphere ; 
but Washington refused. He knew that France 
wanted Canada for the help she gave us in the 
Revolution, and he preferred the English flag up 
there to the French. 



Since the creation of the Federal Union, England 
has been an almost constant factor in American 
politics. Hamilton was the friend of England, and 
Jefferson was the friend of France. We were in 
actual war with France during the administration 
of the elder Adams, and it was then that old Tom 
Truxtun performed feats on the quarterdeck of the 
Constellation frigate against two French men-of-war 
which a Decatur, a Preble, a Perry, a Porter, a 
Farragut, or a Dewey might envy. In 1812 we 
engaged in war with England, and it was in urging 



225 

us to that encounter that Clay, Webster and Calhoun 
laid the foundations of their immense parliamentary- 
reputations. Jackson's victory was the more 
glorious because it was a victory over the English. 
For long years and years England was cordially 
hated by our people. Every Fourth of July oration 
was a philippic and a threat against England. Every 
American orator loved to twist the British lion's 
tail; there was not a day for nearly half a century 
that a war with England would not have been 
immensely popular. We sent John C. Heenan to 
lick Tom Sayers, and though he made a rather poor 
work of it, we sincerely believed that he accom- 
plished it, and bragged about that prize fight more 
than we did of the glorious day of Buena Vista. 
How we did glory in Paul Morphy, whom the 
English chess champion, Staunton, ran away from. 

We were on the verge of war with England 
several times. It was "Old Bill" Allen, then a 
Democratic Senator from Ohio, who gave the 
defiant cry "Fifty-four Forty or Fight" when we had 
the dispute about the line between our country and 
the British possessions at the Northwest. We stopped 
short of 54 :40, and did not fight. There was a big 
row over the Maine boundary, which Webster 
managed to compose without a war. There were 
innumerable disputes about the fisheries, and when 
an American commodore took Mason and Sidell 
off a British merchantman there would have been 
a war, as certain as fate, but for the good sense of 
Abraham Lincoln and the good offices of the 
prince consort. There is a deal of chimney-corner 
history regarding the presence of a Russian naval 
squadron in New York harbor during the war 



226 

between the States, and thousands of men of average 
intelhgence think it unpatriotic to question the 
asssertion that by that stroke Russia intimidated 
England and prevented her from interfering in 
our family fight. Bosh ! The British fleet at Halifax 
alone could have sunk the entire Russian navy an 
hour after it got in gunshot of it. There are two 
things that prevented England from interfering — 
one, a majority of the English people sympathized 
with the North, on account of slavery, and those of 
them who sympathized with the South believed that 
the South would not need any help. I do believe that 
if Lord Palmerston had supposed the North would 
prevail he would have picked a quarrel with the 
Lincoln administration that would have made war 
inevitable." 



Some ten years after our war the Democrats got 
to be somewhat Anglo-maniac, and the Republicans 
did the tail-twisting, though both put Irish planks 
in their platforms. The tariff was the cause of it. 
Thousands of truthful and patriotic Republicans 
were ready to swear that they had seen with their 
own eyes the millions of "British gold" sent over 
here to buy elections for the Democratic party and 
free trade for England. England is a ,great trader, 
the greatest the world ever saw ; but it was absurd to 
suppose that she ever bought, or attempted to buy, an 
American election. 

When the tariff issue gave place to 16 to 1 the 
parties asrain chaneed places. Bryan and Champ 
Clark twisted the British lion's tail as vigorously as 
Ingalls or Foraker had ever cut the caper in the name 
of protection. According to that fine old fellow, 



227 

Richard P. Bland, who could no more harbor an 
insincerity than he could invent perpetual motion — 
according to "Silver Dick" the only thing in the 
universe that was meaner than Wall Street was 
Lombard Street. The ''Crime of 73" was laid on 
England, and millions of men believed it, and when 
Bryan was beaten in 1896 those same millions were 
assured that they and their posterity had been sold 
into slavery for "British gold." 



The Spanish war came and we heard a deal about 
the relative thickness of blood and water, and there 
is no doubt that England was on our side, not for 
love of us, but because it was profoundest policy. 
The rest of Europe was a;gainst us, and there is not 
room for much doubt that the "powers" of the 
continent would have choked us off Spain if they 
had believed that Engalnd would only be neutral; 
but England, with perhaps unnecessary ostentation, 
put the Channel fleet in motion. It was merely a 
stroke of policy on the part of Mr. John Bull, and 
he is expert at that game. 

After the treaty of Paris there is no doubt that 
England encouraged us to "expand," and she was 
more interested in that question than in any we 
ever undertook. We speak her language ; we have 
adopted her policy. What is the inevitable conse- 
quence? Why, virtual alliance, even if she has to 
"fling in Canada" when the pear is ripe. The only 
trouble is, will Canada suffer herself to be "flung 
in?" She now has the protection of the British 
navy without cost. As a part of the American 
Union she would be taxed for a navy. In short, 
England has no friends except her colonies, though 



228 

she and France are getting- on a basis of good 
understanding, and her alHance with Japan is a 
bargain of mutual advantage. Germany would lick 
her to-morrow if she thought she was man enough 
to do it, which she isn't. 



But when the war in South Africa came, 75 per 
cent of our people were for the Boers, and how we 
did howl with fiendish glee over their early victories ! 
How we did flock to the theatre in this town of 
Washington to sit entranced under the spell of 
Webster Davis' spasmodic and hysteric eloquence, 
and laid it on the patriotic impulses of Web's great 
heart that he got stage fright on that immense 
occasion. De Wet was magnified into a Forrest; 
Botha was Stonewall Jackson; the Transvaal was 
Greece and Poland and Ireland, and England was 
everything that was despotic, and more, too. But 
England was grimly resolved, and history teaches 
that when England is in that humor, and united at 
home, a settlement in her favor is only a question of 
time, and so it was now. Of course, we throw it up 
to her that she has had allies in her big wars; that 
Marlborough was aided by Eugene, and without 
Eugene the armies of France would have prevailed. 
But what would Eugene have done without Marl- 
borough? We are not left in doubt. What did 
Eugene do without Marlborough? And the same 
problem is presented in Chatham's first ministry. 
It is quite likely that England would have won 
the "Seven Years' War" without Frederick the 
Great; but it is absolutely certain that Frederick 
would have lost his crown and his realm without 
England. Again, it was England who beat 



229 

Napoleon, and but for her the Corsican demigod 
would have mastered the world. By orders in 
council she made all the oceans and all the seas 
British lakes, and no flag but hers sailed the deep. 
What Lucan said of Cardigan applies to England, 
much as one may hate her. 



Diplomatic England and America are fine friends. 
We sent Reverdy Johnson over there when Andy 
Johnson was President, and he introduced the 
canvas-back duck to the English palate. Since Cedric 
was a Saxon that has been a good way to get the 
good will of an Englishman. James Russell Lowell, 
who was a copperhead in our war with Mexico of 
the most venomous kind, delighted after-dinner Eng- 
land with his speeches. Thomas F. Bayard cooked 
diamond-back terrapin for them, and thus assailed 
the most vulnerable part of an Englishman — his 
belly. John Hay and Joseph H. Choate gave them 
more and more after-dinner oratory, and we are 
the very best of friends — diplomatic England and 
diplomatic America. 

And yet the people of England do not like the 
people of America, and the people of America dq 
not like the people of England. And yet again the 
two peoples are virtually allies, and must continue 
so. Together they can lick the world, and their 
interests are so much in common that one of them 
cannot allow the other to be injured. That is why 
England encouraged us to keep the Philippines. 

But we do not love England and England does 
not love us. 



230 



JOHN DONAN. 

When I heard of the death of this eccentric 
man I recalled riding horseback side by side with 
him one day for miles and miles without either of 
us uttering a word, and that night at the tavern I 
sat up till the small hours of the next morning 
listening to as engaging and enchanting discourse 
from his lips as I ever heard from any one. When 
he died I wrote of him like this : 

My acquaintance with this singular man is as old 
as my memory. When I was a little boy he was a 
great favorite of my father, a frequent guest at our 
house, and in those days he was looked upon as a 
young man of the most brilliant promise. When 
the war with Mexico was declared he volunteered, 
and returned from that adventure Captain of his 
company. He was the first Sheriff of Hart county 
under the then new constitution, elected in 1851, and 
I believe he was re-elected in 1853. Later he was 
repeatedly a member of the Kentucky Legislature, 
where he became the friend and associate of John 
G. Carlisle. In 1860 he was a candidate for elector 
on the Breckinridge Presidential ticket. 

He was a peculiar man, and I attribute it to his 
mental habits. He had a powerful and inquisitive 
mind, and when he read something that appealed 
to his curiosity he reflected upon it profoundly, and 
thus he fell into habits of introspection, that became 
a passion, and he spent a life in speculation within 
himself that was intended for Hart County and the 
State of Kentucky. Many a man with half his 
talents attained distinction in the old Common- 
wealth. He whiled away precious hours in reverie. 



231 

a habit of mind so shrewdly discussed by Victor 
Hugo in "Les Miserables," and a habit that nearly 
engulfed, so to speak, the sub-hero, Marius. 

The mental process of introspection is indispensa- 
ble to the powerful thinker, but it must not be 
carried so far as to become a passion. Conference 
with one's fellow-man is as necessary as thought 
upon theories and principles. I am sure that if. John 
Donan had dwelt in a city and had been a member of 
a club of talented and disputatious men the world 
would have heard a deal of him. 

While he was Sheriff, an office that he adminis- 
tered with fidelity, energy and business capacity, he 
studied law, and, I suppose was admitted to the bar 
abou 1855. He immediately obtained an extensive 
practice and was very successful. He had the legal 
mind and his personal integrity was above suspicion. 
In those days it was the habit of young gentlemen 
to dress elegantly, and Donan was conspicuous for 
his fine apparel. It was the day of broadcloth, doe- 
skin, plaid silk, silk velvet, white duck, gold chain, 
Panama hats and the boots that Marshall made. 
Donan was a handsome man, elegant in physique 
and not ungraceful, despite a careless and indolent 
carriage. Across the street, fifty years ago, he was 
one of the most distinguished looking men in 
Kentucky, and all the urchins in my class at Mr. 
Ford's school envied him. 



Despite the fact that he would meet scores of 
acquaintances in the country road or on the streets 
of Munfordville without notice of them, or return- 
ing their salutations, he was the most popular man 



232 

in Hart county. They knew it was not hauteur, 
nor anything akin to it. There was not a more 
democratic man in all Kentucky in his nature than 
John Donan. Sometimes he would relax, and be 
eager for association with anyone he happened to 
fall in with. Then he was delightful. A fine 
conversationalist, he emplcjyed elegant language, and 
the tones of his voice were soft as velvet. He had 
an exquisite senset of humor — this man who would 
go a month without a smile — and when in the vein 
he would set the company in a roar. 

When a young man he was a strong chess player, 
and I have known him and my father to play the 
game all day and talk half the night. It is not 
possible that he ever asked a man to vote for him, 
and yet he was simply invincible before the people 
of Hart county in the '50s. Had he been what 
was known as "electioneer" he would have secured 
the Democratic nomination for Congress in the old 
Third district in 1859, and had he, and not Sale, 
been the candidate, he would have been elected. 



Something over thirty years ago there was a 
lawsuit in Hart County involving about 4,000 acres 
of fine barrens land in the Hardyville section. The 
late William Thompson, a former law partner of 
Donan, was a party in interest, and I may here 
remark that Thompson narrowly escaped being a 
very great man — the mental material was there, but 
it was not put together exactly right. I have often 
reflected that if this argument, on the stump, or at 
the bar, had been commensurate with the exordium, 
he would have surpassed all contemporaneous 
orators of all Kentucky. The lawsuit I mention 



233 

was transferred to Warren County on change of 
venue, and Captain Donan went down to Bowling 
Green in the spring of 1874 to argue the case for his 
clients. I happened to be in the courtroom at the 
time and was delighted at the effect his speech had 
on Judge Boiling and the bar. His elegant person, 
his graceful manner, his delightful English, the 
simplicity and yet polish of his sentences, and the 
velvet softness of his voice were magical. It was a 
case that he had studied for years, and here was 
the fruit of that introspection Donan had practiced 
on himself so long. There were lawyers here from 
Nashville and Clarksville, and I spent most of the 
next week telling them and other lawyers what I 
knew about John Donan. On that occasion he 
showed what he might have been had he thirsted for 
distinction, had he not had lofty contempt for the 
public applause a Cleon commanded. 



At the hamlet of Center, then in North Barren 
County, now Metcalfe, there lived when Donan was 
a young man, David Philpott, landlord of the 
Good Samaritan tavern, one of the most singular 
characters I ever met. One of his philos- 
ophies was, and I am not sure but that it is 
sound, that it is easier to succeed than to fail, that 
it is easier to be a good farmer than a poor one, that 
it is easier to raise a good crop than a bad one, that 
it is easier to have a fat horse than a lean one, that 
it is easier to make good whiskey than mean, and so 
on. One of his eccentricities was that a man who 
cannot eat with relish bacon, snap beans and corn 
bread ought to die. One of his whimsicalities was 
that in his opinion a man who was called "Bill" 
was not fit to associate with good people. 



234 

Donan used to ride all the way from Munfordville 
to Center and remain there several days listening 
to the conversation of David Philpott. They would 
sit together for hours and hours, Philpott doing all 
the talking and Donan as silent as the Sphinx, 
but a patient and attentive listener. There was 
material in Philpott for a dozen of Dickens' best 
characters, and it is a calamity to letters that Donan 
did not have a genius like the immortal author of 
Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Gamp. 



When I first got license to practice law, some 
forty years ago, I, in company with the whole 
Edmonton bar, went to Lafayette, as it was called, 
though Center was its name, to practice in the 
Justice's court of Stephen R. Edwards, the prince 
of magistrates and the chief justice of Chicken 
Bristle. There was but one case in the court — 
Craddock vs. Gentry. The defendant was as fine a 
specimen of a vagabond nailed to the soil as ever 
was ordered. The plaintiff was a rather vigilant 
creditor. The defendant had raised a crop of 
tobacco, about 400 pounds, and housed it in the hen 
coop. He had forgotten that he owed Craddock 
$25. The day the tobacco became subject to execu- 
tion Craddock had an order of attachment levied 
on it. 

Craddock's lawyer was a Green county man, the 
Hon. "Clubby" Russell (because of a club foot), and 
since then the leader and the idol of the proletariat 
in their fight with the octopus, represented by certain 
repudiated county bonds. Russell was then a 
limited lawyer — that is, Tyler Alexander, our 
Circuit Judge, licensed certain gentlemen to practice 



235 

in inferior courts — County, Quarterly and Justices'. 
We would now call them near lawyers. There was 
no law for it, but these were not lawyers to hurt. 
Yet the last time I saw Dave Towles he told me 
that "Clubby" had got to be a right down g'ood 
lawyer, and I was glad to hear it, for I always liked 
"Clubby." 



Now, we lawyers from Edmonton, five in number, 
did not take kindly to the idea of a limited lawyer 
from Green County coming over into Metcalfe and 
monopolizing all the practice of Chief Justice Ed- 
wards' court, and so we volunteered for Esau 
Gentry, though every one of us knew that at that 
very moment he was the most abject scamp 
between Green River and Cumberland. We 
denied that Esau was indebted to the plaintiff, 
denied the tobacco was subject to execution, 
denied it was Esau's property and demurred 
to the affidavit on which the writ of attachment 
was issued. We did some other things and spoke 
very long, very loud, very eloquently, and that is 
what ruined us. 

We had the case gained a dozen times, but we 
were too vain to bottle our eloquence and insisted 
on gaining it a dozen other times. When we had 
been wrangling about three hours up rode John 
Donan, who was hungry to hear some of the philo- 
sophies and whimsicalities of his friend, Philpott. 
The final order had not yet been made and Craddock 
in person appealed to Chief Justice Edwards to sus- 
pend till he could consult the Captain. It is due 
"Clubby" to say here that he pleaded manfully for 
his client, and he and Lawyer Whitlock liked to 
have had a fight. 



236 

Donan came into the case and we began it all 
over again. The affidavit for the writ of attachment 
was a fearfully written thing, a pleading drafted by 
"Clubby," and I will never forget the remark Donan 
made about it — "I confess. Your Honor, that had I 
drawn this instrument I should have changed some 
of its terms. However, as the pleadings in this 
court may be oral, I think we can get along," and he 
did. 



He beat us all to pieces and went across the 
street to talk with Philpott, or, rather, to hear 
Philpott talk. That was our opportunity. We 
moved for a new trial and got it before Craddock 
and Russell could get Donan back to the courtroom. 
We demanded a jury and set four or five of the 
natives on the counter, and the Chief Justice empan- 
eled them to try the issue joined. 

Way after dark the jury brought in a verdict for 
Craddock, the attachment was sustained, the plain- 
tiff got the tobacco, and all of us had all the fun — 
and all of something else — that we could tote. I 
never better enjoyed a day in my life. 



I shall try to relate an anecdote of John Donan 
that is as singular as the man himself. The war of 
1861-65 found him a prosperous man and left him 
a poor man. He was indebted to a leading citizen 
of Hart County, Jordan Owens, a successful farmer, 
in a considerable sum evidenced by note of hand. 
It became necessary to resort to law and equity to 
subject to the debt a contingent remainder Donan 
had in some real property. 

Donan saw Owens and asked him to ascertain 
what Captain Martin, a leader of that bar, would 



237 

charge to bring the suit and prosecute the case to 
final issue, and when Owens told him the amount 
of the fee, Donan said, "Very well. I'll bring both 
actions myself, one at law and the other in chancery 
and you credit your claim to the amount of my fee. 
I'll acknowledge service of all necessary process and 
enter my appearance whenever necessary so as to 
curtail costs." -And he did it; got the money and 
paid it over to his client. 

He was a very religious man, though, without 
piety. Educated at St. Joseph's College he was 
inclined to be a Catholic. His mother was a Gilipsie, 
and possibly of kin to the mother of James G. 
Blaine, and to the wife of Gen. Sherman. Be that 
as may be, Donan read widely on the subject and 
arrived at the conclusion, after much reflection, that 
the Baptists were right. One Sunday morning, a 
cold day, he was riding horseback to visit his 
mother at Three Springs. He met a Baptist preacher 
in a lane and persuaded him to dismount and go into 
the adjoining field and baptized him in a pond; but 
he never went to church. 

Capt. Donan lived within himself, and I am not 
sure that his life was unprofitable — failure — as most 
men would say it was. 



A BROKEN COLUMN. 

Logan Carlisle was the most promising young 
man I ever met. He was one of the ablest men 
with whom I have ever enjoyed an intimate 
acquaintance. He was the most candid man I ever 
saw. He inherited his intellect, and his mind was 



238 

cast in the same mold his father's was. William 
Wirt said of Chief Justice Marshall that if a flower 
of fancy sprang up in his path the great jurist would 
crush it. So with the Carlisles, father and son. 
Thought, not poetry; strength, not beauty; logic, 
not rhetoric, ever characterized them. Logan 
Carlisle went to the meat of every question. No 
sophistry could blind him. No oratory could dazzle 
him. His mind was cast in the mold of strength 
and simplicity. He cared nothing for mere orna- 
ment. One who knew both father and son all their 
lives said : 'Xogan may not have as much capacity 
as his father; but he has more than his father had 
at his age." 

He was a laborious man. Had there been a lazy 
bone in his body he might yet have been among 
the living. He was a conscientious man and never 
shirked a duty. All the statistics of the Census 
Office had no terrors for him. He reveled in them 
and was never so content as when wading through 
voluminous tables and columns of figures. He spent 
hours, that other young men of his age and condi- 
tion devoted to frivolity, in following the dry, 
tortuous, abstruse, profound reasoning of the law. 
He could make statistics speak the truth and he 
would not have falsified a single unit to gain the 
greatest forensic victory. No man was freer from 
sham. Some complained of his bluntness. The man 
who always speaks the truth must sometimes be 
blunt. He had plenty of heart ; no only was he a 
sympathetic man — that tribe is as the sands of the 
seashore and the leaves of the forest — but he was 
actively benevolent, a tribe not so rare as the 
phoenix, indeed, but not numerous. 



239 

When Mr. Carlisle entered the Cabinet of Mr. 
Cleveland he selected Logan to manage the purely 
routine matters of administration. He controlled 
appointments to subordinate positions; he had 
charge of the building; he made contracts for sup- 
plies and so on. The Apostle Paul could not come 
down from heaven and take on himself the office 
held by young Carlisle and discharge its duties 
without making enemies. Human nature is human 
nature. Disappointment does not reason, and that 
is an end of it. Though frail of body and plagued 
with that vexatious malady, dyspepsia, Logan 
Carlisle did an immense deal of work that four 
years. Daily he was annoyed and besieged by place- 
hunters, of both sexes and all conditions. It is 
praise enough to say of him, and for him, that when 
he went out of office there was not a single indi- 
vidual, friend or enemy, who said, or dreamed of 
saying: "He lied to me." He never made a promise 
that he did not keep, and save Grover Cleveland, 
there was no man connected with that xA^dministra- 
tion, who, in discharge of his official functions, could 
say "no" as positively as Logan Carlisle, and none, 
without exception, to whom it gave more pain to 
say "no." 

He was able to dispatch the immense amount of 
business he did because he systematized his labors. 
He was a born administrator. He never had occa- 
sion to perform the same task twice. When once 
finished it was thoroughly done and there was 
nothing slipshod about it. When his successor was 
appointed the routine work of every bureau and 
division of that immense concern was more nearly 
up to the date, to the hour, than it had been for 
many years. A thorough disciplinarian, he knew 



240 

how to get work out of men. He had force 
of character and commanded and received the 
respect of all and the affection of most of his 
subordinates. He was a man of decision, and no 
other should have control of men. He was a just 
man, fanatically so, and his clear mind gave force to 
his decisions. Almost every day he was called on to 
arbitrate matters between employes and between 
employes and outsiders. On the question of col- 
lections that has vexed all the departments from 
the beginning he decided that employes must pay 
debts founded on Just and valuable consideration; 
but he washed his hands of gambling debts and 
usurious interest. He gave it out that landlords, 
grocers, tailors, washerwomen and coal dealers must 
be paid if employes expected to retain a good stand- 
ing in the department. 



His sense of humor is shown in the following, 
over which the department laughed a month : It 
has long been the rule in all the departments that two 
or more members of the same family shall not hold 
clerical positions in the same department in the civil 
service. One morning young Carlisle was at his 
desk busy with some matters when a bustling, fine- 
looking, matronly woman entered and requested 
speech with him. Upon his assent she demanded his 
reasons for his dismissal of her daughter from a 
subordinate clerkship. He sent for Mr. Hiltz, his 
assistant, who brought the record. Logan read it 
and answered : "Madam, your daughter was dis- 
missed because yourself and she both hold clerk- 
ships in the department, and we discharged her 
because her salary was smaller than yours. The 
lady was up in arms in a moment and cried out : 



241 

"How about you and your father, Mr. Carlisle?" 
"That," he replied, "is a matter that has given me 
much concern, and I have devoted much careful and 
painful thought to it, and have finally reached the 
determination that the old man will have to go." 

After his return from Washington and Lee, young 
Carlisle entered his father's law office. From the 
beginning he was his father's right arm. A glutton 
for work, he relieved his father of attention to mere 
matters of detail. When Logan was yet a boy the 
elder Carlisle one day put a brief in his hand, with 
the remark: "If the principle of this case has been 
adjudicated, it must have been settled this way," and 
then he proceeded to explain. What was required of 
the son was to search the Supreme Court library and 
find the law sustaining the father's position. For 
this work he was invaluable. He had an extraor- 
dinary memory, and on one occasion wrote down 
from memory a speech delivered by his father, 
making several columns of minion. In Kansas he 
formed a strange friendship. He and Jerry Simp- 
son became cronies. He had a warm place in his 
heart for the Populist statesman, and always spoke 
well of him. 

He died at thirty-eight. The ways of Providence 
are past finding out. He was the hope, the idol of 
his parents ; he was the pride, the expectancy of his 
friends. The bench haj no place so high that it 
would have been presumption in him to aspire to. 
He might have rivaled the foremost pleader at the 
bar, and in our highest legislative forum he would 
have been conspicuous for his talents and admired 
for his character. But splendid as was his mind, it 
was the heart of Logan Carlisle that made men love 
him. 



242 



CABElr GUSHING. 



Some time ago a party of young men of average 
culture in a community of more than average 
intelligence were discussing public affairs, and 
something was said about Caleb Gushing. It was 
surprising to find so little knowledge of so distin- 
guished a character among these "bright young 
fellows." One said he was one of the Chief Justices 
of the Supreme Court of the United States ; another 
contended that he was a member of the Confederate 
States Cabniet, and another yet said that he was one 
of the counsel of Andy Johnson in the impeachment 
proceeding. It only shows what an imperfect knowl- 
edge of American history the average American has. 

Caleb Cushing was a very distinguished man, 
and his public career covered a period of forty 
years. He was jurist, statesman, soldier, scholar, 
diplomat, and publicist. It was said of him that he 
was the adviser of every Federal administration 
from Tyler to Hayes. His political versatility was 
as dexterous as his scholarship was varied, and the 
advice he gave Grant was as sincere as that he gave 
Polk. He served Lincoln as faithfully as he had 
Pierce. Originally a Whig and a supporter of 
John Quincy Adams against the assults of Henry A. 
Wise, he left the Whig party in company with 
Wise and supported President Tyler when assaulted 
by Henry Clay. That was the man's start in 
national politics. 



Born in Massachusetts in 1800, Caleb Cushing 
entered Harvard College at the age of thirteen and 
was graduated at seventeen, a wonderful instance 
of precocity. He immediately began the study of 



243 

law, and entered the Harvard Law School, subse- 
quently finishing his studies in the office of a leading 
practitioner at Newburyport, his native place. While 
preparing for the bar he was a tutor at Harvard, 
where he also engaged in literary work; but fine 
as was his mind, vast as was his learning, and 
ceaseless as was his industry. Gushing was not much 
of a writer, unless, it was on legal subjects. He 
did not have the gift of narration. He did not have 
the style, and I make no doubt that a brief in a law- 
suit written by Judge Black, or Senator Toombs, 
was a far more readable instrument than a brief by 
Gushing, though it is certain that Gushing's paper 
contaied all the law and a sufficiency of the philoso- 
phy of the case for all practical purpose. He was 
a platform orator also, biit fell far below Edward 
Everett or Rufus Ghoate in that respect. 

In 1821 he was admitted to the bar, and was 
already an accomplished French, Italian, and 
Spanish scholar. The following year he became an 
editorial writer on a prominent newspaper, and was 
also a constant contributor to numerous New 
England periodicals of that day, notably the North 
American Review. In 1826 he was a State senator, 
and it was in that same year that he was admitted 
a conselor of the Supreme Judicial Gourt of 
Massachusetts, and in his first case before that court 
Daniel Webster was his antagonist. In the autumn 
he was defeated for Gongress by John Varnum, of 
the same political party. When twenty-nine years 
of age, he visited Europe and spent much time in 
Spain. He. was fascinated with the country and 
wrote a book on it, but I apprehend one would learn 
more of the Spanish character from Le Sage than 



244 

he will from Gushing. He was not the man to tell 
us of the land of chivalry, of romance, of poetry. 
There is nothing in his book comparable to the 
simple passage in Robertson describing to us that 
delicious valley Charles V selected as a place where 
to die. I have forgotten the name of it. There is 
much history, legend, and quoted poetry in Cushing's 
book, but it does not give you the longing to see 
Spain and travel over it that some other books on 
Spain do and that were written by obscure men. 



In November, 1834, Caleb Cushing was elected a 
member of the Twenty-fourth Congress, and was 
thrice re-elected. He was a Whig and a partisan 
of Webster, and was not unheralded. He was one 
of the first lawyers of that period, an orator of great 
capacity and power, the first scholar of his time, 
and a prolific writer on numerous subjects. He took 
no back seat in Congress and discussed all the 
leading questions, notably the "right of petition," as 
it was called, in which he sided with John Ouincy 
Adams, who went so far as to present a petition 
from some of his constituents praying for a 
dissolution of the Union because negro slavery 
existed at the South. 

When Gen. Harrison died, Webster remained in 
Tyler's Gabniet and Cushing joined the Tyler party. 
Henry Clay was violently opposed to the adminis- 
tration, though Tyler had been nominated for Vice 
President because he was a Clay man. There was 
a great battle in Congress. The Whig party was 
hopelessly disrupted, and though it elected Taylor 
in 1848, it had in its system the seed of death, 
planted when Henry Clay made his terrific assaults 



245 

on John Tyler. When Gushing left Congress, Tyler 
appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, but Clay 
would not permit the Senate to comfirm him. 

He then went to China as the commissioner of the 
United States and Envoy and Plenipotentiary. 
There he negotiated a commercial treaty, learned 
the language, and studied the people. He remained 
there but six months, and got back to the United 
States in time for the annexation of Texas and the 
Mexican war, both of which he approved. 

Gushing was now a Democrat and decidedly "a 
Northern man of Southern principles." When the 
war against Mexico was declared the military quota 
of Massachusetts was fixed at one regiment, but it 
was not a popular war in that community. Enlist- 
ments were slow, very slow. The copperheadism 
of Hosea Bigelow's poetry met with far more 
public approval than Caleb Cushing's patriotism 
The General Court of Massachusetts refused to 
appropriate $20,000 to equip the regiment after it 
was raised, but Gushing advanced the money out of 
his private means and sent the regiment to Mexico, 
where it arrived too late to fight. Gushing followed 
the command and was appointed its colonel, and 
was quite serviceable in holding courts of military 
inquiry, due to his prodigious and instantaneous 
knowledge of all sorts of law. Later he was pro- 
moted to brigadier general. He gave evidence of the 
possession of considerable military talents, and had 
opportunity afforded there is no doubt that he would 
have proved himself a stout soldier. It was a war 
without an American defeat or serious discomfiture. 
Scott's march to Mexico City was the plan of Robert 
E. Lee's consummate military genius, Scott's Chief 



246 

of Staff, and the numerous furious actions of the 
opposing armies showed what a warlike people the 
Americans are and gave promise of the desperate 
courage that was soon to be displayed in the wider 
theater of 1861-65. The Mexican war was a training 
school for the commanders and their subordinates 
who led in the greater struggle. Lee and Grant, 
Johnston and McClellan, Bragg and Buell, Jackson 
and Hooker, and hundreds of others got their 
baptism of fire on Scott's march to the City of 
Mexico. 

In 1847 the Massachusetts Democracy nominated 
Gen. Gushing for governor, and he accepted the 
honor in a letter written from Vera Cruz, but he 
was defeated by his Whig competitor, though he 
reduced the majority by 9,000 votes. On his return 
from Mexico, Newburyport gave him a salute of 
100 guns, and he addressed his fellow-citizens in a 
speech on the war and the treaty of peace. But 
New England was opposed to both the war and the 
peace, and when Gushing was again nominated for 
governor he was overwhelmingly defeated. 



And now Gushing was in private life, and he and 
Ben Butler the leaders of the party in Massachusetts. 
Butler had but one cause of discontent — the party 
was not quite small enough. There were a few too 
many of them for the Federal positions at the dis- 
posal of the bosses. In those days, the Massachusetts 
Democracy was what the Republican party has been 
at the South for forty years — an appetite, though 
not so insatiate as the concerns at the South have 
proved to be. In 1852, Gushing became a member, 
by appointment, of the supreme bench of Massa- 



247 

chusetts. Old Chief Justice Shaw, perhaps 
America's greatest judge, after Marshall, said of 
him : "When we got him we did not know what 
to do with him, but when he left us we did not 
know how to do without him." Never was there 
a more suggestive mind. With the possible excep- 
tion of James A. Garfield, no doubt, Caleb Cushing 
was possessed of more acquired knowledge than 
any other American. It is related that on one 
occasion he and Rufus Choate were on opposing 
sides in an important and celebrated case at nici 
prius. A large audience was present, professional 
and lay, eager for the expected battle between the 
two giants. To the disappointment of every one, 
a motion for continuance was made by one side and 
not objected to by the other, and the case went 
over. When questioned for agreeing to the post- 
ponement, Cushing excused himself by saying that 
he feared the irresistible eloquence of Choate before 
a jury, and Choate said that he feared the influence 
the boundless knowledge of the law possessed by 
Cushing would have with the court. 

In 1852 the Democrats swept the country and 
destroyed the Whig party. The South was in the 
saddle. Franklin Pierce was elected President, 
carrying all but four States, and two of those at the 
South. The compromise of 1850 was to be the policy 
of the victorious party, and Caleb Cushing was 
invited to a seat in the Cabinet. It was the only 
Cabinet of our history the personnel of which was 
unchanged during, the entire term of four years. 
William L. Marcy was Secretary of State, and it 
would have been better if he had been President. 
James Guthrie was Secretary of the Treasury. 



248 

another man who ought to have been President. 
Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War, and it is 
by everybody agreed that the duties of that position 
were never discharged with greater abihty or more 
fidelity than the four years 1853-57. Robert 
McClelland was Secretary of the Interior, James C. 
Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy; James Campbell, 
Postmaster General. Cushing was Attorney-General, 
and, perhaps, it is not too much to say that no more 
capable man ever discharged the duties of that 
department. In the Cabinet were three Southern 
men and four Northern. 



Mr. Cushing's opinions as Attorney-General rank 
with the ablest that ever eminated from that great 
law office. As a constitutional lawyer he had few 
peers, as an international lawyer it is doubtful if 
he had an equal at the American bar. 

When he left the Cabinet he returned to the 
practice of his profession, and was one of the 
greatest lawyers of the country, ranking with 
Choate, O'Conor, Evarts, Benjamin and the other 
magnates of the profession. He also dabbled in 
politics, and was a Democrat of the straightest sect. 
During Buchanan's administration he joined the 
Southern wing of the party in its war against 
Stephen A. Douglas, and supported Buchanan's 
Kansas policy. He was horrified by John Brown's 
raid, and the following year was chosen to preside 
over the memorable Charleston convention. He 
and Ben Butler cfominated the Massachusetts dele- 
gation, and if those two men had possessed the 
power, Jefferson Davis would have succeeded James 



249 

Buchanan as President of the United States March 
4, 1861. 

When Lincohi was elected and the South seceded 
and the war came on to be fought, Gushing offered 
his services to Gov. Andrew, but he was treated with 
scant courtesy by that official, though why Gushing 
should be rejected and Butler accepted is not quite 
clear. He could not have been a greater failure in 
the field than his fellow-doughface proved to be. Re- 
jected as a soldier, Gushing became a volunteer 
statesman on the staff of Lincoln. It is claimed for 
him that it was his sage counsel that Lincoln 
accepted in the Trent affair, and, if so, he rendered 
the cause of the Union immense service, for if 
Mason and Slidell had not been surrendered war 
with England would have followed, the blockade 
of Southern ports broken, and the independence of 
the Gonfederacy assured. 



When the war was terminated, Gushing continued 
to be the adviser of the Republican party. He was 
the real author of the Geneva conference, the father 
of international arbitration and thus he again 
saved his country from what was bound to 
have been, from every consideration, a disastrous 
war. Had the advice of Sumner been taken war 
would have been inevitable. Fortunately Gen. Grant 
positively hated Sumner. At Geneva, Gusliing n-as 
the leading arbiter of the United States, and there 
he showed that he was a match for the ablest lawyers 
of the world. He achieved a triumph, and Gen. 
Grant nominated him for chief justice of the 
Supreme Gourt. 

The Republican party could not stand that. He 



250 

had voted for Breckinridge in 1860. He had advo- 
cated the Lecompton constitution. He had agreed 
with the Dred Scott decision. He had enforced the 
fugitive slave law — which Northern States had 
nullified — and was distinctively a Northern man of 
Southern principles. The Senate refused to confirm 
the nomination, and the immediate excuse for it was 
a letter Parson Brownlow read in the Senate — a 
letter Gushing had written Jefferson Davis after 
secession had taken place in the South . And it 
was a most friendly letter. No doubt at the time 
he wrote it Gushing approved secession and hoped 
for the success of the South in that movement. 



Gushing was an extraordinary man, one of the 
most industrious our country has known. I have 
neglected to cite many of his actions that would be 
of interest. He died a few days before he reached 
the age of seventy-nine, and death found him 
vigorous, and, perhaps, the busiest man in Massa- 
chusetts. 

There is no Life of Mr. Gushing, and a life of him, 
worthy the subject, would be a history of forty 
years of the American republic. 



A CHAPTER ON PATRIOTISM. 

It was July 4, and when as I walked abroad in 
the morning, a man, a foreign-born citizen, a Hes- 
sian, who was forced to vote the Know-Nothing 
ticket fifty-seven times in one day in that town by 
the "Plug Uglies" of Baltimore, nearly sixty years 
ago, accosted me and demanded to know why I did 



251 

not display the "Stars and Stripes," and he 
challenged my patriotism. He had a little old flag 
out at his window that cost about 5 cents the dozen. 
What I answered would not read very well in print 
in a religious newspaper, though I claim to be an 
indifferent patriotic as Hamlet was indifferent 
honest. 

Now I hold, and will maintain against all comers, 
that no man can be a "patriot" except for the land 
of his birth, where he first saw the light, where he 
first drew from the breast of his mother the milk 
that sustained his infant vitality. Hamilton, the 
foreigner, was an adventurer. Had his lines been 
cast in England he would have been a partisan of 
George HI, and perhaps the one man of all political 
letters who would have b^en able to drive "Junius" 
out of the pamphlet controversy. 

Perhaps I will return to that phase of the subject 
before I quit, though I am now indignant, and there 
is no telling what I am going to say. The man 
who boasts his patriotism is he that was the Pharisee, 
whom Christ rebuked. He prayed long and loud on 
the street corners. He was sanctimonious. He 
reeked in his iniquity and in his sin. He was an 
ingrowing scoundrel from the crown of his head to 
the sole of his foot. He wore the badge; he would 
have exposed to the breeze the flag. If a female 
he would have flaunted chastity; if a merchant he 
would have proclaimed honesty; if a soldier he 
would have vaunted courage. Everywhere and 
everything he would have been a fraud. 



Patriotism is a sentiment, child of the heart and 
not of the mind. It is never clothed in the harlot 



252 

garb of the brazen and brilliant tulip, but wears 
the modest and fragrant decoration of the retiring 
and chaste violet. It is the charity of St. Paul : 

"It sufifereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; 
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up 

"Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, 
is not easily provoked, thinketh not evil; 

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 

"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things." 

And that, too, is patriotism. The two words are 
twin. They mean the same thing and are the same 
thing. 



Alfred the Great was a patriot. So was William 
the Silent. John Hampden was a patriot; so was 
George Washington. Jefferson Davis was a patriot ; 
so was Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee was a 
patriot; so was Ulysses S. Grant. 

Patriotism is a matter of birth, and in our country 
we never had but a single traitor, and his name was 
Benedict Arnold. He was as brave as Caesar and 
after our war for independence was successful he 
fought a duel in England, with Lord Crawford of 
the Scotch peerage, who, doubtless, was a direct 
lineal descendant of that Crawford who commanded 
the Scotch Guards of the household troops of Louis _ 
XL When they came on the field of honor Arnold 
fired and missed. Then Crawford threw down his 
pistol and with scorn in his eye and vitriol on his 
tongue, said, "I leave you to the hangman." 

That same Crawford paid a big forged check 
with the remark, "My name shall not go to protest." 
There is patriotism for you, which is personal honor. 



253 

I read of a military commander in one of the 
States of the Middle West. He was a fool and a 
scamp and it would have taken a platoon of yoked 
oxen to drag him into a place of danger. But O, 
how he did reek with the dross of patriotism ! 

Well, this fellow marched his company of corn- 
stalk mihtia out on the grounds at drill July 4. He 
ordered that every man there present of the thou- 
sands of spectators should salute the flag. There 
were some reprobate patriots who told him to go to 
grass. They believed in the flag all right, but they 
scorned it when a Sir Andrew Aguecheek like he 
ordered them to take off their hats and they were 
'right. If that flag means what I interpret it, it is 
this: I can keep my hat on in its presence. Why, 
even in Spain, in that elder day when "divine right" 
maintained in every country in Christendom, the 
Spanish grandee stood covered in the presence of 
his king, the master at whose order he would have 
marched to the cannon's mouth. 

If I am supposed to show the flag and flaunt it, 
or bow to it when somebody else shows it and 
flaunts it, what is it but Gessler's cap? The only 
difference is that one was a cap and the other is a rag. 

In this connection I may say that Ben Butler was 
the chief owner of that concern in Massachusetts that 
furnishes the United States with its flags. He was 
the author of the law that flies the flag from the 
tens of thousands of public buildings in the United 
States. That was not patriotism; it was thrift. 
There's millions in it. 

The flag should be sacred, representative of 
patriotic sentiment, immaculate justice and exact 



254 

equality only. Make it that, and I'll salute it; 
I"ll kneel to it. 



And Johnson licked Jeffries. I'm glad of it. In 
the realm of brutality I want a negro for king, and 
I hope that Johnson will "knock the block off' any 
other white man who lowers himself to enter upon 
combat with him. Practically it was a fake fight, for 
Jeff knew he was all in ; but he got tens of thousands 
of dollars out of it, and if it were possible to associate 
Alfred Tennyson with a ruffian I might quote-. 

"And the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that 
honor feels." 

I am glad that the nigger won on another account. 
It shows that the race prejudice is just as intense 
at the North as it is at the South, and the increasing 
exodus of negroes from the South to the North will 
soon make the question acute, and then it will be 
settled. 



The way to compose it is to enter into treaty with 
Great Britain under the terms of which that empire 
shall take over Liberia and hold it a crown colony. 
Then hire all the educated negroes we have, from 
Booker Washington down, to emigrate to Liberia 
and become British subjects, and there work out 
their salvation, elevate themselves to the skies, God 
willing. 

Failing that, death will settle the thing. Inferiority 
cannot stand with superiority. There are few more 
negroes in this country in 1911 than there were in 
1900. The negro will go to Liberia or go as went 
the unslavable Indian. 



255 
WORDS. 

They have estabHshed another hall of fame in 
New York, but it is for words, and not for men, as 
witness the following press dispatch : 

"A contest to decide the twenty-five most beautiful 
words in the English language, conducted by the 
West Fifty-seventh street Branch of the Y. M. C. A., 
this week was won by John Shea, a lawyer, of 416 
Broadway. The prize was a flexible leather standard 
student's dictionary. Twenty-one of the twenty-five 
words submitted by Mr. Shea were accepted. 

"The words accepted are melody, splendor, adora- 
tion, eloquence, virtue, innocence, modesty, faith, 
joy, honor, radiance, nobility, sympathy, heaven, 
love, divine, hope, harmony, happiness, purity and 
liberty. Three of the words rejected were grace, 
justice and truth." 

The rules pertaining to the rivalry are not given, 
and one is left to conjecture whether the words 
should be considered only for excellence in matters 
of cadence, rhythm, euphony; and from such 
standpoint those selected are doubtless as good as 
any, but if sentiment, emotion and susceptibility 
are employed in the equation, how can one prefer 
eloquence over justice, melody over truth, radiance 
over duty? 



Justice embraces all the virtues, lacking none. 
Without it the universe would be chaos. It is the 
basic principle of all moral excellence, of all 
moral existence, and here I have opportunity to 
incorporate my ' favorite prose quotation from 
an eminent clergyman of the Anglican Church, 
that I am glad I memorized it the first time 



256 

I ever read it, more than forty years ago, and I 
hope every youth who reads this letter will do 
likewise. I quote from memory, a deplorable habit 
I long ago dropped into. 

"Truth is its handmaid; Freedom is its child; Peace is its 
companion ; Safety walks in its steps ; Victory follows in its 
train — it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel, it is the 
greatest attribute of God. It is that center around which 
human passions and interests turn, and justice, sitting on high, 
sees genius and power and wealth and birth revolve around 
her throne, and marks out their orbits and teaches their 
paths, and rules with a strong hand and warns with a loud 
voice, and carries order and discipline into a world, which 
but for her would be a wild waste of passions." 



With justice enthroned, no State should perish. 
It was not the snows of Russia, nor the coalitions 
of Northern Europe, not the English navy, that 
overcame Napoleon the Great. It was his disregard 
and contempt of justice. He was a liar and a robber, 
and hence, God smote him. Fortune forsook him. 
Even victory in her chariot fought against him. 

But if this battle of the words is based on mere 
rhythm, the thing becomes trivial, peurile and of 
very small moment. Our language has thousands 
of words just as euphonious as those chosen. It is 
a matter of dainty taste, a thing of squeamish 
opinion. When it comes to rhythmic beauty, the 
Indian names of the geographical nomenclature of 
the State of Mississippi will beat the entire English 
dictionary out of sight. 



THE RACE QUESTION. 

Shakespeare wrote as no other writer of profane 
letters has writ, and among ¥i^ tens of thousands 
of gems of wisdom we find this : 



257 



"For there was never yet a philosopher 
That could endure the toothache patiently." 



And I believe you will find it in Shakespeare that 
we can bear the ills of our neighbor with more 
serenity than we will ever tote our own. 

The World's Sunday School Convention lately 
convened in this town, and the local committee very 
properly excluded the colored contingent from the 
parade, whereat and whereupon there was the devil 
to pay and not enough hot pitch handy. The colored 
hierarchy delivered itself of an indignant harangue 
that very thinly veiled the ambition of every edu- 
cated negro — his aspiration to full social equality. 
And the foreign contingent fell in, applauded, 
"washed their hands in invisible water with imper- 
ceptible soap," and thanked God they were better 
than their neighbors. 

What does an Englishman know of the race ques- 
tion as it exists with us? As a Pharisee he smites 
his breast and exclaims, "We have no race preju- 
dice!" Certainly they have not; there is no raw 
material over there out of which to fashion such a 
thing; but you put as many negroes per thousand 
inhabitants in Great Britain as there are in the 
United States and they will forge you a race 
prejudice that will make ours blush. 

Put one of these gentry down in the black belt 
of the Cotton South, keep him there a twelve-month, 
a citizen of any one of the Gulf States, and Ben 
Tillman will rebuke him for the intensity and un- 
charity of his race prejudice. Haven't we seen it in 
Yankees who have ^'<-ched their tents down there? 



If it were only ill manners — for I am not very 



258 

strong on manners — if it were not a suggestion of 
the immoral, I would ask these Sunday school 
kickers to read the English classic, "Tom Jones," by 
Henry Fielding, in which this admonition is found : 
He will discuss a subject with no less intellectual 
force who first informs himself as to the merits of 
the question. And that is true, as anyone with a 
very little of tlie quality of ratiocination must soon 
discover. 

These visitors from abroad are densely and defi- 
antly ignorant of the race question in the United 
States, and it is an impertinence for them to tell 
us what to do about a problem that involves caste, 
that is stronger than armies and navies and all the 
philosophies of the transcendental schools and all 
the foolishness of such sentimental blatherskites as 
Wendell Phillips and his set. Let us not forget that 
New England was a slave trader. Their pirates 
brought the savages here, sold them to us down 
South, where we Christianized them. But why go 
into that, the most infamous chapter in all history, 
Southern Reconstruction, and I have read about 
Caligula and Nero, Tamerlane and the Turkish 
empire of the heroic Sultans, too. 

But what made me mad and what is responsible 
for this rather choleric paper is what two Yankee 
preachers had to say about it. One Hartshorn of 
Boston, and one Stroiber of Brooklyn, voted them- 
selves clear of race prejudice, and the paper says 
they "emphasized the difference between the treat- 
ment the negro receives in the North and in the 
South." 



Well, let me put a plain tale that will show you 



- 259 

how little more than an oyster these two know about 
it. I grant you they are perfectly honest, perfectly 
sincere, and from their standpoint God-fearing, if 
not God-loving men. The latter I doubt, for we 
cannot love what we do not understand. 

But what is the treatment of the negro at the 
North ? Do you find negro barbers in Boston ? No. 
Why ? Because of a race prejudice that would have 
the negro a statesman clown South, but not an 
artisan up North. Down South when a brutal 
negro commits the unspeakable crime, we, in orderly 
way, take him out and lynch him. It is the only 
way to preserve civilization. If there were a better 
way we would practice it. How is it in Springfield, 
Ohio, or Springfield, Illinois? Why, they not only_ 
lynch the offending negro, but they kill scores of 
innocent men, women and children of the race and 
burn their roofs over their heads. Kansas, where 
old John Brown murdered and robbed, set the 
fashion of burning negroes at the stake. 

It was an immeasurable calamity that the South 
did not heed the admonitions of Washington and 
Jefferson, Clay and the Breckinridges, and gradually 
emancipate the slaves, exporting them as they were 
freed. New England refused to go into the Union 
unless it was provided in the Constitution that until 
1808 they were not to be disturbed in the thrifty 
work of turnmg molasses into rum, which they 
swapped on the coast of Guinea for black slaves, 
that they exchanged for tobacco on the coast of 
Virginia. They carried the tobacco to Liverpool, 
and there exchanged it for goods, wares and 
merchandise that they took to Cuba and swapped 
for molasses, out of which to make more ram, with 



260 

which to buy more slaves. And thus the elect of 
God prospered and made "gayneful pyllage." Peter 
Faneuil was one of 'em. 



It was discovered that slavery was not profitable 
at the North. That was after 1808, and only then 
it was first revealed that slavery was wicked at the 
South. But for the meddling Yankees — long-haired 
men, who should have been born women, and short- 
haired women, who should not have been born at 
all — slavery w^ould have died a natural death at the 
South. Nearly all the F. F. V.'s were emancipa- 
tionists. The very cream of Kentucky statesmanship 
of all parties were emancipationists. North Carolina 
was pretty nearly an emancipation State the middle 
of the last century, and Tennessee was a little behind 
her. The South had numerous emancipation 
societies, and the very year the New England 
Anti-Slavery Society was formed, representatives 
from eighty-five Southern emancipation societies met 
in Baltimore to devise ways and means to free the 
negro. 

But when rude, impertinent, unmannerly, insolent, 
meddling New England set herself up as the only 
exemplar on earth of political God and morality, 
every Southern anti-slavery society, except old Cash 
Clay and a few other fanatics in Kentucky, dissolved 
and turned rank pro-slavery. That made the war. 
Nobody but a fool or a fanatic denies that slavery 
was recognized as property in the Constitution. The 
South stood pat on the Constitution. The North 
nullified it, and being the stronger, her nullification 
went. 

The South said, "Very, well, if you won't stand 



261 

by the articles of co-partnership, let the firm be 
dissolved." Under the Constitution as interpreted 
by the Supreme Court, a Southern man had as much 
right to take into a Territory his negro slave and 
there hold him as the Northern man had to take his 
horse. But the North repudiated its own Consti- 
tution, and that made the war. 



Abraham Lincoln was no more what Henry 
Watterson idealizes him than he was what Donn 
Piatt paints him. He was a Southern poor white, 
and had no philanthropy to throw to the negro. But 
he had all the contempt in the world for the senti- 
mental nonsense of Emerson, Sumner, Phillips and 
that set, who would have sent to the slaughter all 
the whites of the South, of all ages, and both sexes, 
had that been the only way to free a nigger. 

In his debate with Douglas Mr. Lincoln expressed 
his contempt for the negro, and all he sought was to 
emancipate the whites of the South from the ruin 
that slavery threatened to bring upon them, and as 
all now clearly see it would have resulted in. Lmcoln 
had more than the wisdom of Franklin, and he was 
the most practical statesman of an epoch out of 
which American civilization, as by a miracle, 
emerged without destruction. Had he lived there 
would have been no fourteenth and no fifteenth 
amendments. There would have been none of that 
cruel and infamous reconstruction at the South, for 
every drop of his blood was Southern and every 
pulsation of his heart Southern. The man he admired 
most in all the world was the Vice President of the 
Southern Confederacy. 



262 

This world is full of folks who have much to 
learn. Lincoln did not wage war to free the slave 
negro, but for the Southern white. He saw that 
by the close of the nineteenth century Mississippi 
would have 20 negroes to one white. He saw that 
every poor white would leave that State, that would 
be turned into plantations on which dwelt a. dozen 
whites and a dozen hundred blacks. That was what 
Lincoln fought the war for, and his victory was a 
blessing to the South, though hideously disguised 
after his death. 

I believe the race question will be composed by 
the inexorable hand of death. In a race between 
superior and inferior, and that is the derby Charles 
Sumner entered the nigger in, the inferior will be 
left at the post, or distanced in the stretch. Look 
at the Indian. The negro will disappear as he did. 



THE RETURN OF THE FLAGS. 

From the battle of Edgehill to the enlistment of 
Jacobite Highlanders in the regular army of Great 
Britain was a period of five score years and ten, and 
covers the English revolution from beginning to 
ending, for Culloden was the Appamattox of a Lost 
Cause, as Edgehill was its Bull Run. From the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter to the appointment of 
Fitzhugh Lee and Joseph Wheeler to commands in 
the United States army was less than two score 
years. Rebellion is a great history maker; unsuc- 
cessful treason is a great romance maker, just as 
successful treason is generally a public benefactor. 
Not the least shrewd idea of some of the British 



263 

essayists is that had not Cromwell come in the 
middle of the seventeenth century England would 
have had her Danton, her Murat and her Robe- 
spierre, by the middle of the eighteenth, and she 
somewhat narrowly escaped the vortex that engulfed 
France at the close of the eighteenth century, not- 
withstanding her successful rebellion of 1642 against 
Charles, and her successful treason of 1688 against 
James. The rebellTons called the wars of the roses 
were mere quarrels among the nobles, but the 
rebellion of 1642 and the revolution of 1688 were 
struggles between prerogative and liberty. All of 
them were civil wars and rich in valor, devotion, 
poetry and romance. 

In the closing days of the session of the American 
Congress, soon after the completion of the nine- - 
teenth century, each House without ado, without 
remark, without address, without a ripple, without 
demur, without division, unanimously passed the 
joint resolution restoring to the former Confederate 
States certain battle flags captured on the field by 
the Federal armies during the great war of 1861-65. 
It was a magnanimous and and a patriotic thing to 
do, and in comparison it makes churlish the chivalry 
of the Black Prince in becoming cup bearer to his 
royal captive, and it was all the better because in 
each House the measure was put upon its passage 
upon motion of a man who had worn the blue. 
There can be but one possible suggestion of regret, 
and that is that the initiative in this action did not 
emanate from that Senator who was governor of 
Ohio some thirty years ago. It would have been 
more appropriate, more high-minded, if possible, 
and so far from it being a matter of stultification, 



264 

there was too much nobility of soul in the trans- 
action for that. 



The William Pitt, who became Earl of Chatham, 
was a British statesman in 1745, when Charles 
Edward made that romantic and heoric campaign for 
the crown and the realm of his royal ancestors. That 
prince prosecuted the war with valor and with 
chivalry, and its disastrous culmination has com- 
manded for him the sympathy of every generation 
since. 

Loyalty to and zeal in the cause of the Stuart were 
the sentiment through the Highlands, and Flora 
Macdonald is a heroine wherever the history or the 
romance of Scotland has penetrated. Who would 
not glory in an ancestress like this noble girl, or like 
the Jane Lane, who saved Charles II nearly 100 
years earlier. 

It is somewhat curious that the victor of Culloden 
is another name for butcher, and the vanquished of 
the field is possibly the most interesting of all the 
Stuarts, ahvays excepting the beauteous Mary, 
Puritan as well as Cavalier — the descendants of John 
Knox and John Balfour, if they had any; the 
posterity of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards 
— have read with the sympathy of tears Sir Walter's 
admirable story of that campaign, and Fergus Mac- 
Ivor Vich Ian Vohr, whether such a man ever lived 
or not, is as real as Brutus or Hampden, Bayard or 
Sidney. There is no division of sympathy as to 
Culloden; the vanquished got all of it, and ever 
will, and yet there is little doubt that Cumberland 
was as good a man as Charles Edward, his cause a 
better cause, and his victory an inestimable and 



265 

perennial boon to the British realm, for doubtless it 
saved another revolution, perhaps another civil war. 



After Culloden, the Highlanders were treated with 
much rigor. They were disarmed and that was the 
greatest affront that could have been put upon them. 
One clan was forbidden to have its name — Mac- 
Greggor — and here was its defiance : 

If they rob of of name, and pursue us with beagles, 
Give their robes to the flame, and their flesh to the eagles. 

Pitt entered upon that ministry, the most glorious 
in English history since Marlborough's victories, 
about seven years after Culloden. He was wise 
enough to know that there would be no real peace, 
no adequate security in England so long as Highland 
Scotland was disloyal and thirsting for revenge, and 
so he recruited several regiments from the clans of 
these rebels and sent them to fight England's battles 
in every quarter of the globe during the Seven 
Years' War. They and their successors of those 
historic regiments have added epics of glory to 
English annals by their (Jeeds of daring in both 
hemispheres and on both sides of the equator. 

Nowhere else in the world has rebellion so flour- 
ished as in Scotland. A great Scotchman wrote : 
"In any general classification of constitutions, the 
constitution of Scotland must be reckoned as one 
of the worst, perhaps the worst, in Christian Europe. 
Yet the Scotch are not ill-governed. And the reason 
is simply that, they will not bear to be ill governed." 
The same may be said of our Southern States in 
the time of reconstruction, the government 
which the Southern people found a way to throw off. 



266 

Before the time of Mary, rebellion and treason had 
at some time abided in every Scottish castle, and 
Mary was dethroned and imprisoned by her brother, 
the great regent — the strongest and wisest ruler 
Scotland ever had. If Murray had been legitimate 
and the Protestant he was, Elizabeth might not have 
been Queen Regnant but Queen Consort. In the 
civil wars Mary was defeated, and ultimately lost 
her head; but posterity has done her more than 
justice, and she will always live in poetry and in 
romance the loveliest woman and the most unfor- 
tunate queen since that wife of Herod the Great, who 
was called Mariamme the Asmonean. 



Montrose is another hero of history, of romance 
and of poetry; and he, too, was loyal to the house 
of Stuart. Call him loyalist or traitor, as you will. 
His career was glorious, though it brought him to 
the block, and he gained more victories in the field 
than Wallace. If Charles I had made him com- 
mander-in-chief and kept him in England there is 
every reason to imagine that Cromwell's head would 
have paid the price of his rebellion. Judas the 
Maccabee was no greater hero than his Scotch 
noble, and little more fortunate a soldier. Yet he 
died a traitor's death, but every Scot for generations 
has loved and honored his memory, and scorned and 
despised his executioners. 

And that other Graeme — Claverhouse ! Where is 
the Scot, at home or abroad, highland or lowland, 
whether his ancestor was a gloomy Cameronian, or 
a blithe Cavalier — where is the Scot, though his 
grandsire's grandsire preached in conventicle, or 
plunged into battle beside Dalzell, whose heart does 



267 

not respond to "Up with the Bonnets of Bonnie 
Dundee ?" 

To the lords of Convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke; 
"Ere the King's crown go down there are crowns to be 

broke. 
Then let each Cavalier who loves honor and me 
Cry 'Up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.' 

******* 
"There are wills beyond Pentland and lands beyond Forth, 
Be there lords in the Lowlands, there are chiefs in the 

North, 
And brave dunnie-wassels, three thousand times three. 
Will cry, 'Up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.' 

******* 

"Then ho, for the hills, for the caves, and the rocks; 
Ere I own an usurper, I'll crouch with the fox. 
But tremble, false Whigs, in vour traitorous glee; 
Ye hae nae heard the last of my bonnets and me !" 

More fortunate than his kinsman Montrose, who 
died on the scaffold for Charles I, Dundee died for 
James II on the field of battle, at the close of a 
hard-fought day with the shout of victory ringing in 
his ears, and Sir Walter Scott in "Old Mortality" 
makes him say that is the death of all others he pre- 
ferred. And Sir Walter makes the last minstrel 
say this of that glorious field on which Claverhouse 
fell : 

Low as that tide has ebbed with me. 
It still reflects to memory's eye 
The hour my brave, my only boy. 

Fell by the side of great Dundee. 
Why, when the volleying muskets played 
Against the bloody Highland blade. 
Why was I not beside him laid! — 
Enough — -'he died the death of fame; 
Enough — he died with conqueroring Graeme! 

It is the duty of mankind to thank the Stuarts 



268 

for their misrule that made rebelHoiis for Walter 
Scott to ennoble and embalm in his immortal verse 
and his matchless prose. 

Sir Walter was a Tory, and a Scotch Tory at that. 
It is not strange then that, wizard that he was, he 
threw a glamour of poetry and romance around the 
Cavaliers of whom he wrote. Though a prisoner, 
and acquainted with grief, Mary is nowhere else so 
lovely as in "The Abbott." Sir Henry Lee, in 
"Woodstock," is the incarnation of the old English 
gentleman. The Baron of Bradwardine, in 
Waverley, is a perpetual delight, and so it is 
throughout the chapter; but when a Whig takes up 
the subject we find this same partiality to the Stuart 
cause — possibly because it is the lost cause. Take 
Defo'e "Cavalier," that Chatham, w^hen he was the 
first orator and first statesman of Europe, thought 
was authentic history, written by a partisan of 
Charles. Defoe was a Whig, author of the "True- 
blooded Englishman," and a pillar of the reign of 
William III ; but when he came to write a romance 
he was compelled, or he saw fit, to write on the other 
side. Perhaps it only shows that romance goes with 
the lost cause. And may we not speculate that when 
the American "Waverley" comes, if he does come, 
and turns out to be a Yankee, as he probably will, his 
heroes will be Ashley, Stuart, Morgan, Forrest and 
their troopers ? 



France is almost as prolific of rebellion as 
Scotland. Moncontour, a Catholic victory, ranks 
with Ivry, a Huguenot victory. Colligny and Guise 
are equally illustrious names. The Constable Bour- 
bon led the enemies of his country at Pavia, but 



269 

never treason had more provocation, and he is a 
hero of romance. It was in civil wars that du 
Guesclin and Dunois gathered those laurels that will 
not fade till chivalry ceases to be a theme for letters. 

In the war known as the Fronde, Conde and 
Turenne were on opposing- sides, and that is a 
lovely story of Turenne sleeping in his tent and con- 
fident of security because he supposed Conde was a 
hundred miles away. His army was assailed after 
midnight, and when Turenne awakened and 
discovered the nature of the attack he remarked to 
his staff, "Conde is here," and so he was. There is 
no doubt that Conde was a rebel, and little doubt 
that he was a traitor, but not long after he and 
Turenne were marshals of France in the court, and 
at the head of the armies of Louis XIV, and it 
would be hard to tell whom of the two reaped for 
his master and for France the more military glory. 

But that part of France known in the history of 
the revolution as La Vendee was the scene of the 
most desperate, the most relentless, the most heroic 
civil war of modern times. There must have been 
something good after all in those Bourbon princes 
to command such devotion and such valor. But the 
Vendeans were fighting for faith as well as for king. 
And such a fight ! They were descended from those 
spinning maids of Bretagne who took from their 
miserable earnings the ransom Chandos fixed as the 
price of Bertrand du Guesclin's liberty, and what 
worthy successors in arms of the mighty constable 
are expressed in the names of Bonchamps, 
Cathelineau, Larochejaquelein, de Lascure, D'Ibee 
and Charette. Each of these was brave enough and 
talented enough to have attained the rank of marshal 
of France in the armies of Napoleon ; but before the 



270 

return from Egypt all of them had fallen like Bayard 
and were in Elysium with du Guesclin and Dunois, 
soon to be joined by Desaix and Lannes. Though 
the population was but 800,000, these chieftains and 
their undisciplined levies held at bay for years the 
armies of the republic, and a hundred times defeated 
the legions that had advanced the tri-color across the 
Rhine, hurled Prussia back from the Ardennese, and 
pursued the beaten forces of Austria to the Black 
Forest. In the history of warfare, from Leonidas 
and his Spartans at Thermopylae to Nogi and his 
Japs at Port Arthur, no people bore themselves 
braver or faithfuler than the Bretagne and Vendean 
peasantry in their t)attles for the religion and their 
king. Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas and George 
Sand all undertook to paint these princes and peas- 
ants, and narrate their deeds, and the themes were 
worthy even their mighty genius and splendid 

diction. 

In England, in Scotland and in France the glories 
of their civil wars are now become national. No 
distinction is made between loyalist and rebel. 
Hampden, the patriot, and Montrose, the traitor, are 
one, the common pride and the common heritage of 
every succeeding generation. Only the other day a 
descendant of that Duke of Berwick, an Englishman 
born, nephew of Marlborough, who at the head of 
a French army, beat an English army at Almanza — 
only the other day his descendant laid claim to the 
English dukedom of his ancestor, who would have 
been hanged for a traitor if caught on English soil in 
the reigns of his half sisters, Mary and Ann. If 
one will carefully read the life of Berwick he will 
conclude that that admirable hero was more like 
Robert E. Lee as a soldier than any other great 



271 

captain of modern times. He did not lead French 
armies and grasp the baton of the marshal of France 
because he wanted to, but because he had to. And 
Lee was not a Confederate because he wanted to 
be one, but because he had to be one. 
Both were slaves to duty. Berwick's royal father, 
James II, commanded the French troops at the battle 
of the Boyne, but he showed what a splendid Eng- 
lishman he was at La Hogue, where he cheered the 
English fleet that beat the French fleet his cousin 
Louis sent out to restore him to his throne. He 
forgot that he was a dethroned King, forgot his 
hopes. He only saw the EngPish flag victorious and 
gave aloose to his patriotism. And that very day the 
Admiral of the British fleet was a Jacobite, and 
would have been glad of a licking could he have 
found a way to take it with honor. 



Fifty years have come and gone since Appomat- 
tox. The flags are returned, and this generation 
have forgotten the bitterness and remember only 
the glories of 1861-1865. How will it be in 1961? 
Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, Sherman and 
Johnston — Federal and Confederate, patriot and 
rebel — Yankee Doodle and Dixie — will all be one ; 
all a common heritage of devotion and valor. 

There will be no more division among our people 
touching the patriotic impulses of both armies than 
there is at this time in England touching the merits 
of the issues between York and Lancaster in the 
war of the roses. All that this generation cares to 
know about it is that York was the wh:te rose and 
Lancaster the red. All future Americans will care 
to know will be that Grant wore the blue and Lee 
the gray. 



INDEX. 



Title 3 

Dedication 4 

FIRST BOOK 

IN THE PENNYRILE OF OLD KENTUCKY 

A Pastorale of the Pennyrile 7 

A-Comin'-An'-A-Gwine i6 

A Corn-Shucking 23 

Our Village 1 27 

Our Village II 31 

Our Village III 35 

Our Village IV 39 

Robert S. Munford 43 

Long and Short Novels 49 

Moses Aikin 53 

Mrs. Southworth and Mr. Bonner 58 

Luxury 66 

A Sarching Cup of Tea 73 

A Lay Sermon 78 



SECOND BOOK 
MEN, THINGS AND EVENTS 

Robert Edward Lee 85 

The House of Stuart 91 

Clement Laird Vallandigham 99 

Benjamin R. Tillman no 

Hinton Rowan Helpler 118 

Carl Schurz 124 

Edward Ward Carmack 135 

William Pinkney 142 

The Pacific Slope 149 

Asperity and Amenity in Politics 157 

Two Antagonistic Ideas 166 

Jeremiah Sullivan Black 172 

Old and New Spain 181 

Broderick 187 

American Diplomacy 197 

David B. Hill 205 

Orators Past and Present 214 

England and America 223 

John Donan 230 

A Proken Column 237 

Cabel Cushing 242 

A 'Chapter on Patriotism 250 

Words 25s 

The Race Question 256 

The Return of the Flags 263 

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